


Every Heart a Home

by lena-in-a-red-dress (CSIGurlie07)



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, Metallo!Lena, tumblr migration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-26
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-17 16:00:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 27
Words: 23,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29719632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CSIGurlie07/pseuds/lena-in-a-red-dress
Summary: What if the Metallo!Lena from the 100th episode had been rescued by Supergirl soon after her Cadmus-imposed transformation? A study in the power of hope, help, and compassion. Originally posted to tumblr, copy and pasted here for easier reading, by popular demand.
Relationships: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor
Comments: 31
Kudos: 255





	1. Prologue/Premise

So, I was rewatching the 100th episode for research purposes, and now I have to wonder: what about the world in which Lena’s helicopter crashed, but Supergirl saves her from Lillian?

Not soon enough to keep Lillian from integrating the Metallo technology into Lena’s physiology, but soon enough that Lena’s hope and faith in something good is rekindled.

Because she’s never met Supergirl, and the world has every reason to believe she died in that helicopter crash. Yet here Supergirl is, holding her hand with more care than Lena’s been shown in months, promising that everything will be okay.

She flinches under the hero’s touch, expecting pain but finding only warmth.

Supergirl holds her gaze unwaveringly.

“We’ve been looking for you.”


	2. Chapter 2

“No… Don’t–” Lena breathes as the hero begins to unbuckle the restraints pinning her to the table– including the lead reinforced strap across her torso. But her voice is raw from screams and disuse. Supergirl doesn’t hear.

The strap loosens, and the lead apron shifts to expose the refined kryptonite embedded in her chest.

Supergirl recoils with a cry. Lena watches in horror as lines of green burrow under the hero’s skin, pulsing through the veins in her face. Supergirl staggers towards her, reaching for the lead apron, but drops to the floor before she can reach it. Lena can no longer see her, but she can hear the hero writhe on the floor.

“H-help…” Her voice is too weak to carry. Lena reaches for the apron, but it slips, sliding to join the hero on the floor. “No, please…”

Lena’s heart begins to pound. Her breath comes quicker as panic sets in, and a familiar pressure starts to build in her chest. No… no, no, no…

The pressure crescendoes to a scream of agony. A beam of searing energy pours from Lena’s chest, shooting up into the ceiling. Lena’s screams joins Supergirl’s as every nerve ending catches fire, burning her down to the very bone.

The rest of the world melts away, even the sound of her own screams. All Lena knows is pain.

She doesn’t feel the prick of a sedative against her skin– all she knows that the agony dulls to a throbbing ache. Her muscles unlock, and through the roaring in her ears Lena can hear a woman barking orders.

“Get her out of here!”

The woman must not mean Lena, because the weight of the apron returns and arms pin it to her chest, trapping her beneath. There’s no effort to move her.

“I’m sorry,” Lena rasps.

She blinks through her tears, and sees a woman with short brown hair standing over her. Over her shoulder, Lena catches a glimpse of Supergirl being dragged out between two uniformed soldiers.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…”

“We know, Lena, we know.”

The woman covering her offers a terse smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. She’s worried, but she still offers Lena comfort as the sedative starts to pull her under.

“It’s okay, Lena. We’re going to help you.”


	3. Chapter 3

The air feels different.

The warehouse had been damp, perpetually chill, and echoed with emptiness. As Lena slowly wakes, the air around her presses warm and dry against her skin, enveloping her in gentle sounds.

Beeping monitors, now a fixture of her reality.

Muffled voices, urgent yet distant, as though muffled through a door.

Faint snores, from someone sleeping in the room next to her bed.

With considerable effort, Lena pries open her sleep crusted eyes. The ceiling overhead is too close, too white. She blinks against the disorientation, and when she tries again she can count the ceiling tiles between the air vents, and suddenly it doesn’t feel like the room is caving in on her anymore.

More surprising, though, is when she turns and finds the snores are issuing from Supergirl herself.

Alarm sears against her senses, and Lena gasps when her heart starts to pound. Supergirl jolts awake at the sound, bolting upright even as Lena recoils.

“Get away!” Lena chokes out. “Get away from me, please–”

Supergirl lifts her hands placatingly. “I’m not going to hurt you–”

“I don’t want to hurt YOU–”

“You won’t,” Supergirl promises gently. Lena pauses when the hero nods towards her chest, hands still aloft. “Look.”

Lena reaches for the collar of her hospital gown, peeking beneath to see that the chunk of kryptonite is covered by a portion of her leaded apron, now secured by shoulder straps over each arm and a buckle around her ribs.

“We’re both safe,” Supergirl continues. “I promise.”

Sagging, Lena sucks in a ragged breath. All she wants is to curl into a ball, close her eyes, and pretend none of this had happened at all, but she hasn’t the strength. Tears start to come, burning hot against her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she says again, her voice cracking under the strain. “I’m sorry. I never wanted to hurt anyone.”

Supergirl nods, slowly bending to perch on the seat she’d just been dozing in. “I know. But I’m okay. We’re more concerned about you.”

Lena blinks up at the ceiling. “You can’t remove it, can you.”

“No,” Supergirl responds after a beat. “The kryptonite is fully grafted into all of your neurological and circulatory systems. It’s… It’s the only thing keeping you alive.”

It comes as zero shock to Lena– Lillian has made no effort to spare Lena the details of her condition, or the success of her work in resurrecting her. Lillian has never been one to sugar coat.

“I know you’ve been through a lot,” Supergirl continues. Her eyebrows crinkle in the middle. Lena doesn’t quite know what to do with the concern in the hero’s gaze. Or the sympathy. “But we were hoping you could help us.”

“How?”

“The people who did this to you… we think they’re part of a group called Cadmus. We think the person behind is–”

“Her name is Lillian Luthor,” Lena surrenders readily, bitterness rising in her throat. “She’s my mother.”

Lena’s jaw tightens. She meets the hero’s gaze.

“What do you want to know?”


	4. Chapter 4

The woman who’d interceded at the warehouse introduces herself as Director Danvers. She works closely with Supergirl, and Lena can’t help but notice that their exchanges often seem more personal than that of a federal agency and an alien hero consultant should be.

But Director Danvers is kind, and extends a similar sort of familiarity to Lena when she offers every scrap of knowledge she has of Cadmus’ organization. Which, granted, isn’t much– being strapped to an operating table for almost six months doesn’t really lend itself to learning the covert details of a terrorist cell.

Lena’s true strength lies in what she knows of her mother– Lillian’s contacts and finances, personality and pattern of logic. Lena gives them everything she has, and in exchange Lena is treated well: a guest, rather than a prisoner.

She’s lucky, all things considered, but that sense of serendipity wears thin when the nightmares start creeping in. She never had them at the warehouse– her nightmare was when she opened her eyes, not closed them. But in the gentleness of her new surroundings, Lena’s subconscious reaches for those dark memories and drags them to the forefront of her mind, trapping her in a neverending loop of saws and drills and cold eyes that only look at her long enough to realize she’s awake.

And that’s only until the kryptonite made it so that no amount of anaesthesia could keep her out long enough.

Lena wakes up screaming, her chest and veins on fire as the kryptonite discharges again. This time, the lead pad on her chest stays in place, trapping the heat against her chest. Even so Supergirl grunts in pain as she rises from her chair– never far from Lena’s side.

But instead of pulling away, Supergirl forces herself closer, clamping her hand around Lena’s.

“It’s okay,” she says, the words almost drowned out by Lena’s cries. Lena’s hand clenches reflexively around hers, and threads of green seem to spread from her fingers to the hero’s. “It’s okay. I’m here.”

Somewhere in the background, the monitors are shrieking in alarm, and the room soon fills with scrub-clad nurses. They try to move Supergirl out of the way, but the hero doesn’t move, not even when Director Danvers strides in to take over. Supergirl holds Lena’s tearful gaze with a reassuring smile.

“I’m not going anywhere.”


	5. Chapter 5

“Why are you being so kind to me?”

Lena’s soaked in sweat and acheing, and in Supergirl’s presence she feels small. Unwilling to return to sleep, Lena sits upright, staring at the blanket that pools in her lap.

Her chest still throbs, but the fire of kryptonite in her veins has dimmed to embers.

“I was made to destroy you.”

It certainly wasn’t to save Lena’s life. Lillian isn’t nearly so sentimental as that.

“That’s not your fault.” Supergirl’s response comes swift and certain. Rather than reassuring her, it only makes Lena feel all the more guilty.

With nothing else to say, they sit in silence for several long minutes. Outside the medical bay, the world goes on, even in the dark of night. Lena doesn’t wish to join them, nor does she want to stay in this room. She’d rather be nothing, than this.

“Do you feel up for a walk?” Supergirl asks. Lena doubts it, but she finds it difficult to say no to those bright eyes and soft smile. With the heros help, she disengages from the monitors around her bed and slides her bare feet onto the cold linoleum floor.

When she hisses at the chill, Supergirl scoops her up bridal style. “Sorry. Didn’t even of that. I’ll bring you slippers for next time.” She pauses. “Is this okay?”

Lena blinks. The question is so foreign to her that she forgets to respond, overwhelmed in the warmth, the smell, the presence of Supergirl– and the abstract realization that its been so long since anyone has asked her permission for anything.

But Supergirl makes no further move except to receive Lena’s stare, until Lena’s brain catches up and she manages to mumble an affirmative.

Supergirl carries her through the DEO, and to Lena’s surprise she’s not in some desert bunker, but instead in the heart of a cavernous office building, complete with a broad balcony looking out over the night lights of National city.

Fresh air washes over Lena in a warm breeze as Supergirl carefully sets her down on bare concrete still warm from the afternoon sun. It’s been so long since Lena’s felt the outdoors that she simply closes her eyes and inhales, as deeply as she can, until the warm air fills her from the the top of her head to the tips of her toes.

She doesn’t realize Supergirl is watching her until she finally opens her eyes and meets with a gentle blue gaze.

“I know what it’s like to be alone, in a situation you can’t control.” Supergirl’s voice is soft. “I’m not going to condemn you for what’s been done to you. You haven’t tried to hurt me.”

“But I did hurt you,” Lena points out. Intentions mean nothing– not when her very existence is a threat to the world’s two greatest heroes.

Supergirl only shakes her head.

“Forgive me for saying this, but… with a family like yours, are you really so desperate to have another enemy?”

For some reason, the question strikes Lena as funny. She barks a laugh, hoarse and as unfamiliar as the smile that carves her face. Just like that, the tension between them eases, and Lena feels some of the tension bleed from her shoulders.

“No,” she says, chuckling. “I suppose not.”

Supergirl rests her forearms against the balcony rail, tilting her head in a way that lets her long blonde waves spill over her shoulder, catching the light from the DEO bullpen in a cozy glow.

Lena’s heart starts to pound, but not in the way that precedes a blast. This pounding is soft, and makes her fingers start to tremble with sudden nerves.

“I know I can’t really help you with what you’re going through,” the kryptonian says softly, oblivious to way Lena’s heart has crawled up to lodge itself in her throat. “But I’d like to be your friend, if you’ll let me.”

It takes Lena a long moment to find her voice again.

“I think I’d like that.”


	6. Chapter 6

To Supergirl’s frustration, Lena isn’t the only one with misgivings about her purpose.

“You should keep your distance, Kara,” Alex warns in a low voice when they have a moment alone.

Kara groans. “Not you too.” She pours another sugar packet into her coffee and gives it a rough stir. “It was hard enough getting Lena to stop jumping every time she sees me. I don’t need you giving her more reasons to be afraid of herself.”

“She’s dangerous! She may not want to be,” Alex allows, before Kara can counter in Lena’s defense, “but she is. In fact, there is no one on Earth right now who poses a greater threat to you than Lena does.”

“The shielding is working.”

“For now. We don’t know how much energy she can actually generate, and I’m not sure we have the means to fully test her abilities. But the fact remains that the kryptonite in her chest is unstable. It could get more lethal, or worse…”

“Worse?”

“It could become less effective.”

Kara’s brow furrows. “Wouldn’t that be a good thing?”

Alex sighs. “Not when it’s the only thing keeping her alive.”

Oh. Reality settles over Kara like a lead blanket, pressing like a weight against her chest. It’s hard to remember that Lena is effectively on life support– one glitch, one mishap, and Lena could drop dead.

In that moment, Kara realizes that Alex isn’t just trying to protect from physical harm: she’s trying to protect Kara’s heart in case Lena doesn’t make it.

“Look, I appreciate your concerns,” Kara says, giving Alex’s wrist a squeeze. “Truly. But Lena needs a friend right now, and I’m going to be that for her. No matter what happens.”

“You don’t have to–”

“Yes I do!” Kara clips out sharply. “Yes, I do, because her entire life has been destroyed and the only people who are supposed to care about her are the ones who did it to her.”

Anger and revulsion churn in Kara’s chest, itching to lash out. She may not know Lena very well yet, but she knows that someone so concerned with doing harm deserves better than a family who would try to kill her– or weaponize her. Despite her pain, despite her trauma, Lena has been more concerned about Kara’s safety than her own, and– Kara won’t turn her back on compassion like that.

“She’s a kind person who’s had something awful done to them. I won’t let her go through whatever comes next alone. Not if I can help it.”

Alex sighs. She’s said her piece, and she knows better than to fight a losing battle. She nods. “Okay then.”

—

Lena’s strength doesn’t return. In fact, despite the relative comfort of her new home, she finds herself sleeping more and more, and when she does wake there’s often a medic taking notes at her bedside. The increasingly heavy set of their features is enough to know that her condition is worsening.

Supergirl remains a fixture as well. She seems to spend much of her time in Lena’s room, as she’s there whenever Lena opens her eyes, always quick with a smile and a bright hello. It’s enough to blur the chronic ache in Lena’s bones, and ignore the perptual nausea that refuses to go away.

“So,” Lena asks one day, when she’s in a fair mood despite her exhaustion, “what do you do when you’re not saving the day or chasing away the nightmares of a woman you hardly know?”

Supergirl laughs. “I used to have a day job.”

“Used to?”

“Well, I used to work as an assistant, but when I got the opportunity to work in a different department, my new boss didn’t like me very much. And then, when–”

Supergirl trails off, and doesn’t continue until Lena prods her further. “When what?”

“When your helicopter crashed, and I wasn’t there, I… I decided I shouldn’t have let my priorities get crossed. If I hadn’t been so caught up in trying to please Snapper, maybe you wouldn’t have…”

She trails off again, only to force her way back with a thin smile.

“Anyway, that’s when I became Supergirl full time.”

Lena stares at her. “You blame yourself for…” She gestures vaguely to the mess that was her body. “This?”

“I could have kept you safe. I should have kept you safe.” Supergirl shrugs, accepting the culpability as easily as the weather. “I’ll regret that for the rest of my life.”

It’s self flagellation, but it’s also a kindness. Lena accepts it with a reach of her hand, taking Kara’s fingers in hers.

“I don’t blame you,” she says softly. She cracks a grin. “I mean, I did. A little. When I was trapped there, wondering if the Girl of Steel didn’t save me because of my last name, I blamed you for not being there. And I blamed you for every day I wasn’t rescued. But I think I was just desperate, and blaming you was easier than confronting the fact that it was my own mother doing this to me.”

Supergirl looks away, but leaves her hand in Lena’s.

“Hey,” Lena says, giving Kara’s fingers a squeeze. Supergirl looks at her once more. “You said you wanted to be my friend?”

The hero nods. “Of course.”

“I may not be the authority on friendships, but I hear that friends forgive each other.”

Supergirl huffs a laugh. “They do.”

“Then it stands to reason that they forgive themselves too,” Lena rations. Supergirl doesn’t look convinced. “A deal then: you forgive yourself for not saving me, and I’ll forgive myself for almost killing you when you actually did save me.”

At that, Supergirl sighs. “Okay.”

Lena shoots her a tired, slightly lopsided grin, and earns a smile in return. Lena can only marvel at how the hero’s eyes seem to sparkle above it, as though she were the only person in the world who made her smile like that.

It’s a wistful thought.

“So,” Supergirl says, changing the subject. “How do you feel about Disney movies?”


	7. Chapter 7

Even Director Danvers weighs in on Lena’s case. To Lena’s surprise, the director boasts a considerable understanding of human– and not so human– biology and anatomy. If she had the energy, she’d ask a thousand and one questions of her, but as it stands she simply lets her eyes rest as the Director and the attending doctor on staff bicker over their next course of action.

“She’s losing a considerable amount of weight,” the doctor points. “We’ve already introduced a high nutrition diet–”

“But she’s not eating as much as she needs to combat the loss–”

“Well–”

They’re both interrupted by a huff from Supergirl. “Enough.”

There’s a whoosh of air as Supergirl departs, but by the time Lena pries open her eyes the hero is already back.

Four overstuffed bags of Big Belly Burger dangle from Supergirl’s fingers, and she presents them to Lena with lifted eyebrows and an enticing grin.

“Care to share?”

Lena’s already churning stomach nearly revolts at the idea. “I don’t know…”

“Come on, just a few bites.”

She’s only known Supergirl a few days, but she can’t help but melt at the sight of those plaintive puppy eyes.

“Okay.”

Lena manages to work her way up to sitting while Kara dumps a pile of fries and cheeseburgers onto the rolling tray she slides over to Lena’s bed. She hands Lena a burger and watches in anticipation as Lena carefully unwraps it.

Her stomach roils painfully, rejecting the smell of grease and cheese. But Kara’s still looking at her with those eyes, so Lena takes a hesitant bite.

Chewing is laborious, and she has to force herself to swallow. But the moment the mouthful reaches her belly, her discomfort shifts. It’s no longer nausea she’s feeling.

It’s hunger.

“Oh my god,” Lena mutters, shoving another bite into her mouth. This time, she almost moans when grease coats her tongue, and warm cheese sticks to her teeth. “This is…”

“Good, right?” Supergirl chirps.

Lena can only nod, filling her mouth with a third and fourth bite in quick succession. The burger disappears in no time at all, and when Supergirl offers her another, Lena accepts it without a word.

As she eats, her heart beat seems to calm, and the room stops fading in and out around her. In that moment, Lena realizes she hadn’t been sick, she’d been starving.

“Yes!” Supergirl crows, clapping her hands. She points at Director Danvers. “Told you.”

The Director rolls her eyes and leaves, reminding the doctor to mark his chart on the way out. Supergirl turns back to Lena with her hand up for a high five.

“Calorie buddies, up top!”

Lena blinks at her, still chewing. Her hands remain wrapped around her burger.

“Right,” Supergirl coughs, retracting her hand. “Food first, high fives later. Gotcha.”


	8. Chapter 8

As Lena’s caloric intake rises, so does her energy levels. She stays awake for an hour after her feast (a record), before falling into a deep sleep. When she wakes she feels refreshed for the first time since before the crash.

As always, Supergirl is there waiting for her.

“Hi,” the hero greets.

Lena breaks into a bright smile. “Hi.”

“I have a surprise for you.”

Curiosity sparks as Lena studies her. “What?”

“Breakfast.”

Putting two fingers between her lips, Supergirl lets loose with an earpiercing whistle. At her cue, a line of agents file in, their arms laden with boxes of donuts and flats of coffee and wide caterer’s pans of scrambled eggs. 

Lena begins to laugh, but doesn’t protest when Supergirl loads a heaping plate and hands it over. She accepts the offered fork as well, only to freeze when Supergirl calls to wait.

“What now?” Lena asks with a laugh.

Supergirl turns, and exchanges the loaded plate for another. This one bears only a single offering: a sticky bun.

“You have to try this first,” Supergirl declares. She resumes her seat in her usual chair, with her own plated sticky bun cradled in her lap. “They are the best in the city, I swear to Rao.”

“Oh, really.”

Supergirl carves off a large chunk of cinnamon pastry and shoveled it into her mouth. “Uh huh,” she mumbles. “As a resident of National City, you’re going to have to know where all the good stuff is.”

Lena pulls a small piece free and lets it melt on her tongue. She moans slightly. “Okay, you might be onto something.”

“See? Stick with me, Miss Luthor. I’ll steer you right.”

They eat and talk the entire day. Supergirl is a surprisingly gifted conversationalist. She talks with her hands, and laughs frequently. She recounts entire episodes of The Office, and knows everything there is to know about the gossip of the celebrity tabloids. Lena normally couldn’t care less about either, but she drinks it in like it’s water in a desert. It’s nothing, it’s meaningless, and yet it’s everything.

That evening, she accompanies Supergirl to the balcony on her own two feet. Leaning against the ledge, she wiggles her toes in the fluffy bunny slippers covering her bare feet.

“Thank you for these,” she says.

Supergirl nudges her shoulder playfully. “You’re welcome. They suit you.”

“Hah. If my mother new I had my feet in a pair of bunny slippers, she’d have a stroke.” An unexpected lump rises to Lena’s throat. She swallows against it, but it sticks there. “Maybe that would be better for everyone, wouldn’t it.”

“Hey. You’ve had a good day today. Don’t let her ruin it.”

“I know,” Lena sighs. “It’s been nice to pretend. Thank you.”

Supergirl turns to face her, a familiar crinkle creasing her brow. “Pretend? What do you mean?”

“You know… This. Us. Pretending we’re just two normal people being two normal friends.”

“We are normal!”

“We’re not even people!” Lena exclaims. Her voice lifts and carries on the breeze that ruffles Supergirl’s hair, obscuring the flash of hurt that flickers across her face. Lena freezes. “I don’t– I didn’t mean–”

“Wow.” Supergirl pulls away. “Okay.”

“What I mean is that I’m, what– a krypto-netic cyborg? And you, you’re–”

“An alien?”

“An icon,” Lena amends. “You’re Supergirl! You’re a package of virtues wrapped up in a pretty cape.”

Supergirl deflates a little, her shoulders sagging slightly. Lena sees the change in her stance, and mentally kicks herself.

“I’m sorry,” she sighs. “I don’t mean to minimize what you do. You’re a hero–”

“No, no,” Supergirl cuts in. “I get it. I understand what you mean.” She sighs. “And you’re right.”

Lena doesn’t know what else to say. It’s probably for the best– only a Luthor could take the only friend she has in the world and proceed to insult her straight to her face. Jesus.

“Kara.”

Blinking, Lena looks at Supergirl. “What?”

“My name is Kara,” the hero repeats. She offers a small smile. “Supergirl is an icon, but I’m also just Kara. We might not be normal, Lena, but our friendship can be.”

The last thing Lena expects is trust. That Supergirl– Kara– extends it to her now, despite hardly knowing her, despite the rock in her chest and the weight of her last name… Lena’s eyes burn with the press of unexpected tears.

“It’s nice to meet you…” she offers. “Kara.”


	9. Chapter 9

The next morning, the woman sitting beside her bed is wearing jeans and a soft blue sweater. Her hair is half pulled back, and she’s wearing glasses as she flips through a book.

This must be the woman behind the icon, then.

Kara.

Over the next few days, this Kara appears more and more. The only time Lena sees the cape is after a mission, but even then it’s barely a moment before she blinks and Kara is back, relaxed and soft at Lena’s bedside.

Which, now that Lena is feeling better, gets old. Fast.

Under Director Danvers’ close supervision, they begin to investigate what exactly’s been done to Lena’s body, and what exactly she can do with it.

They learn that much of her skeleton has either been reinforced or replaced with titanium– a fact they first discover when Kara takes Lena to walk on a tread mill, and Lena puts her foot straight through it, shredding her skin to reveal the chrome plating beneath.

The sight of it nearly sends Lena into a panic attack, and the dangerous pressure in her chest that Lena’s learned to dread begins to pound, pulsing dangerously with gathering energy, until Kara cups Lena’s face in both hands and redirects her gaze from her leg to Kara’s eyes.

“You’re okay,” Kara declares softly. The dangerous pounding in Lena’s chest subsides, until it’s replaced with a nervous flutter. “You’re still you.”

“I don’t think I am,” Lena whispers back. Tears prick at her eyes.

“You’re the you I know,” comes with sure response. “And the you I know is kind and compassionate. What’s underneath the skin doesn’t change that.”

Lena doubts that. But the reassuring smile Lara gives her makes those doubts melt away, until all she can do is nod.

“Come on,” Kara says, helping Lena to her feet. “Let’s get you patched up.”

—

She doesn’t even have a limp. The damage from the treadmill is only superficial, and by the next morning the skin is healed over completely, with pink new scars the only trace of injury.

After that, Lena learns to take care. She learns to move slower, step softer. She cracks the thick shatterproof plastic of her drinking cup, and shatters every pen and pencil when they try to test her fine motor functions through writing.

Lena swiftly loses patience, and expects the others to as well. But to her surprise, each tiny disaster only makes Kara’s smile soften further. When Lena asks, all she gets is a quiet, “you remind me of someone, that’s all.”

Her increased metabolism makes her antsy, so Lena looks forward to the endurance tests. They truck her out to a track in the middle of the desert, and start her off with something simple: jogging laps.

She keeps her pace slow, expecting to flag before the end of the first lap– corporate life hadn’t been kind to her fitness even before the crash, let alone half a year lying prone on a gurney. But the exhaustion doesn’t come by the end of the first lap, or the second. On the third, Kara joins her, cape flapping ungracefully behind her.

“Last one to the finish line buys the popcorn?”

They’re going to watch Lady and the Tramp tonight, and Supergirl is clearly looking forward to it.

Lena has no money and no freedom to go anywhere near a shop, but she doesn’t bother to point that out. She grins. She better not lose then.

“You’re on.”

Okay. So maybe it was wishful thinking that she might be able to beat the girl of steel at her own game. But Lena didn’t regret a single step that followed, as the world moved faster around her, slowly picking up pace until Lena was running faster and further than she’d ever run in her life.

The cluster of DEO agents at the finish line grow with each pass they make, bringing a grin to Lena’s face to match Kara’s. Lengthening her stride, Lena falls into a rapid rhythm, timing her breath to her footfalls. She’s barely winded, has barely even broken a sweat. And still she runs.

Kara keeps pace beside her, never ekeing too far ahead– proof enough to Lena that the hero easily could, if she wanted to, overtake her. They keep going, and going, and going, at Lena’s top speed, until the exertion finally begins to catch up with Lena. Her breaths starts to quicken, and another, dreadful senstations makes her stumble.

Clutching her pounding chest, Lena doubles over, panting.

Alarm fires across Lena’s senses as Kara reaches for her in concern.

“Don’t touch me,” Lena snaps, the words sharp in her panic. Kara pulls away, hurt, but lets Director Danvers sidle in between them.

“Talk to me,” Danvers says, gentle despite her authority. “What’s wrong?”

“Get her away from me,” Lena chokes out as the pulsing grows stronger. “Please!”

Danvers acts without hesitation. She immediately signals to two of her officers, who move to form a barricade between Lena and her friend.

“Lena? Wait–!”

Lena’s vision blacks out as the first pulse hits. The pain brings her to her knees with a cry, and she barely has the presence of mind to curl herself over her knees, further shielding the kryptonite and it’s deadly beam from its intended target.

“LENA!”

“Get her out of here!” Director Danvers shouts. “Blanket, now!”

Lena tries to tune out the world around her, but fails. She can hear Kara struggle to get close, but ultimately defer to the agents keeping her at bay. She hears running feet and weapons loading, until the weight of a leaded blanket envelops her, encompassing her entirely.

In her small leaden cocoon, Lena finally lets the tears fall. The pain comes in white, hot waves of agony, but it’s the anguish that does her in. The totality of her loss is overwhelming– her life, her body, and now her control is beyond her reach. She is completely and utterly alone.

A new weight settles over her, estimating where her head and shoulders are. Lena hiccups, sniffling pitifully as Director Danvers’ muffled voice works its way through the lead blanket.

“It’s okay, Lena. We’re right here. Just stay with us.”


	10. Chapter 10

“Are you okay?”

Lena pries open her eyes to meet Kara’s worried gaze. The hero hasn’t changed out of her suit yet, and stands awkwardly in her boots and cape, wringing her hands as she hovers.

“Define okay.”

The leaden breastplate had held: it had trapped the kryptonite blast against her skin, but in so doing the protective layer had heated enough to singe the cotton t-shirt Lena had been wearing. Now, back in the DEO, Lena lay drained in her bed, struggling to remain awake. She feels low on strength, patience, and hope, but can’t bring herself to take it out on Kara.

Her friend slides her chair closer to the bed. She sits, resting her knees atop her knees. “You scared me.”

“Sorry.” Lena offers a tired smile. “But yeah. I’m okay.” She doesn’t feel it, and doesn’t have the energy to fake it, but the words spill off her tongue in spite of her. Anything to smooth that little crinkle away.

Kara huffs a quaking laugh. “Liar.”

When Lena swallows, she almost chokes on the sudden lump in her throat. “I’m a ticking time bomb, Kara.”

“Lena, no–”

“I’m a ticking time bomb a heartbeat away from going nuclear. I don’t want to be a danger to you, I just–” Her voice cracks. “I don’t!”

She wipes her eyes, studiously avoiding Kara’s. When she reaches for Lena’s hand, Lena shifts away.

“Don’t, please. If this is what the rest of my life is going to be, I don’t want it. I don’t want it.”

“Hey.”

Kara’s voice is calm, gentle. Lena balks at it, tries to tune it out, but Kara waits, patiently, until Lena meets her gaze.

“I know things seem hopeless right now, but– you’re not the only person whose life has ended as they know it, okay? There are people, even dangerous people, who are dealt a hand they don’t deserve, and they just have to…”

“Suck it up?”

“Find a new path.” This time, when Kara reached for her hand, Lena lets her have it. Kara cradles it in both of hers, as though it will help Lena hear her better. “I am so sorry this has happened to you. You don’t deserve it, not any of it. But… however hopeless things seem right now, there will be more than this. I promise you that.”

Lena releases a ragged sigh. She may not want the comfort, not from the woman whose life her existence threatens, but the hopeless knot in her chest loosens all the same. As though she can sense the crack in the levy, Kara scoots even closer.

“I will help you find your path, Lena, in any way I can. All I need you to do is not lose hope. Lean on me if you have to, just don’t give up. Okay?”

Blue eyes gaze up at Lena beseechingly. The last of her insides untangled. Lena nods. “Okay.”

Kara lifts one eyebrow. Disentangling one hand, she offers her little finger. “Pinky promise?”

Lena huffs another laugh, but wraps her own pinky around the offered vow.

“Pinky promise.”


	11. Chapter 11

The worst part about being at the DEO is when Kara’s called out on a mission. It happens more frequently than Lena would like: sometimes, they’ll be mid conversation when Lara cuts off, then excuses herself with mumble she barely squeezes out before she’s vanishing in a whoosh of superspeed. Most times she’s back in ten minutes or less, but other times…

Other times Lena turns on the tv that’s been wheeled into her room to watch news footage of Supergirl duking it out with the alien of the week, and sits with her heart in her throat as her only friend in the world faces danger three times her size.

That’s what’s happening today, except this time, Kara doesn’t seem to be enjoying herself. This time, Supergirl isn’t trying to lead the alien away from city center or usher the panicked bystanders to safety between volleys.

This time, it’s a fight for her very life.

Lena doesn’t know anything about the alien when she watches Supergirl get smashed through a building. She isn’t thinking about what she’s doing when Kara staggers out of the jagged hole she’s made, bleeding.

Lena doesn’t think at all: she just moves.

She’s out of the medbay and sprinting for the lobby before anyone can even call after her. Director Danvers’ shouts go unheard as Lena vaults over the balcony rail. The landing reverberates through every one of Lena’s bones, but none of them break. She staggers over the cracked pavement, already running.

She runs and runs and runs, her only guide the thin billow of smoke rising over the skyscrapers in front of her. With every step, her heart begins to pound.

This time, she lets it.

The increasing thump of her heart propels her faster and faster, until suddenly she’s on the scene, just in time to see Kara whiz past her, carving a furrow into the street before slamming to a stop against a fire hydrant.

Lena sees the alien coming in for another pass and diverts to intercept. She barrels into him at top speed, tackling the beast to tumble head over heels in a messy, undignified sprawl. In the confusion that follows, Lena kicks at him with both feet, sending him flying away from both her and Kara.

Scrambling to her feet, Lena skids to Kara’s side. She’s horrified to see the bruises already forming, the way Kara can barely open her eyes against the increasing swelling. Still, she looks up at Lena with concern.

“Lena, no, get out of here…”

A roar from behind them drowns out the warning. The pounding in Lena’s chest intensifies, growing more and more painful. Fear creeps up her spine, but this time, Lena refuses to let it control her.

She fumbles at the collar of her shirt, ripping the material straight down the middle to get at the leaden material beneath. When she yanks on it, the stitching at the straps give way, exposing the pulsing kryptonite embedded in her chest.

Summoning all of her courage, Lena pivots to face the charging beast.

She lets go.

The column of energy that explodes from her chest catches the alien full in the face, disintegrating it on impact. The alien slumps, but Lena doesn’t see it. The pain overwhelms her, but she clings to the last threads of conscious thought to slump onto her front, directing the kryptonite radiation into the pavement beneath her.

She can only hope that she hasn’t sealed Kara’s fate by removing the shielding.

The last thing she hears is the sound of screams not her own, and the wail of sirens growing closer.

Her last thought is of her friend.

_Kara…_


	12. Chapter 12

For the first time since her rescue, Lena wakes up alone. Her hands scrabble at her chest, relieved to find that her shield is back in place, but even that doesn’t banish the lump of apprehension that rises to her throat when Director Danvers walks in without a familiar hero at her side.

“Did I kill her?”

Danvers exhales, blinking slowly with tired eyes.

“You saved her life.”

Lena doesn’t believe it until she walks into the medbay nextdoor and sees Kara curled under a sunlamp, sleeping peacefully. Her breath leaves her in a whoosh, and Lena struggles to keep her composure as Danvers leads her back out of the room.

“I almost– she almost–”

Director Danvers nods. “Yeah. Almost. But she’s okay now, thanks to you.” Something in the director’s gaze shifts, softening to reveal a weakness Lena didn’t know she had. “Thank you.”

“I’d like to sit with her, if that’s okay,” Lena says, still half convinced she’ll be banished back to her own bed, or worse.

But the director only nods. “Of course. Stay as long as you want.”

Lena sits, and waits, until Kara stirs hours later, blinking the sleep from her eyes. Her injuries have healed, but her gaze is still heavy with exhaustion.

Still, she smiles when she sees Lena.

“My, my, my,” Kara croaks, “how the turn tables.”

Lena rolls her eyes, relief creeping down her spine.

“Dork.”

—

After that, things start to change.

As soon as Kara is back on her feet, Director Danvers turns her sights on Lena.

“Sparring room, twenty minutes,” she declares one morning, walking in on Kara and Lena sharing a breakfast consisting of every variation of poptarts to be found in the tristate area. She walks back out again without waiting for a response, leaving Lena to blink at Kara in question.

“Hey, I spar with her every Tuesday,” Kara informs her. “Must be your turn.”

Sure enough, when Lena walks into the sparring room twenty minutes later, she finds Danvers waiting for her with a water bottle and a sweat towel.

“If you’re going to be running out to the field every time things get dicey, you have to be combat trained.”

First up, apparently, is hand to hand combat.

Lena endures several rounds, allowing Danvers the opportunity to flatten her without much protest. But Lena isn’t a Luthor for nothing. After the fifth toss, Lena resets, and settles into a comfortable, familiar stance. When Danvers comes at her, Lena lets her decades of training takeover, gripping her opponent firmly by the wrist and pivoting to twist Danvers over her hip and flat to the mat.

Lena grins down at her. “Like that?”

Director Danvers glares at her. “You’ve got experience.”

“I dabble,” Lena shrugs. Or at least she did. To be honest, Lena revels in the return to something she’d practiced before her life had ended in a fiery crash.

She lets Danvers climb back to her feet, then bounces on her toes slightly as she waits for the next pass. Danvers studies her, then cracks a small grin.

“Then this just got more interesting.”

Interesting may not be the word of choice when Lena flattens Danvers for the sixth time in a row. To the director’s credit, though, she springs right back up and resets.

“Okay. Next roung, anything goes. Don’t hold back.”

Lena arches a brow. Considering the crater she’d made underneath the balcony is still being filled in, holding would probably be in the director’s best interest.

“Okay,” Danvers allows. “Fair point. Hold back in strength, but not technique. I need to see what you can do.”

With a shrug, Lena agrees. “All right.”

The next round starts in a flurry of blows from the director, forcing Lena to defend. It’s long moments before she sees an opening and takes it, sweeping low with one leg in an attempt to take Danvers’ feet out from under her.

Danvers hops it easily and retaliates with a spinning back kick to Lena’s head as she rises, only just managing block it in time. Lena rolls with the force of the blow, gaining some distance before rolling to her feet. The director breaks into a wide grin.

“Good.”

They go again.

And again and again, until Lena is sweating and Danvers is panting, neither willing to concede defeat. Lena feels invigorated by the challenge, and to her surprise, she’s having fun. Judging by the glint in Danvers’ eye, so is she.

On the final pass, though, Lena is a hair too slow blocking the blow Danvers sends towards her chest. The roundhouse kick catches her square in the chest, connecting with the kryptonite shard embedded in her sternum. The force of it sends Lena flying– her vision fills with stars, and the breath leaves her body in a whoosh.

The stars don’t clear, even as Lena lays limp on her back, heaving for air. It’s not until she hears Danvers call for a medic that she realizes her limbs are seizing, twitching and clenching uncontrollably. Then the pain hits, bright and hot.

“Goddammit, Luthor,” she hears distantly, as though heard through someone else’s ears. “You were supposed to block it.”

—

This time when Lena regains consciousness, Kara isn’t the only one waiting for her to wake up. Seeing her awake, Director Danvers straightens from the wall she’d been leaning against.

“Sleeping Beauty awakens,” she drawls.

Lena rolls her eyes, grimacing when she realizes her chest feels like a single massive bruise. “What the hell happened?”

“You got lazy,” comes the succinct response. Danvers relents a moment later. “The impact interrupted the synaptic response of the kryptonite in your chest. We got you back up and running, so you should be fine, but– consider it a hard reset of your system.”

Kara interrupts with an unexpected huff of laughter. All eyes turn to her, and she presses her lips together against further giggles.

“Sorry, but… have you tried turning it off and on again?”

Lena breathes a chuckle, only to moan when the movement aches deep in her sternum. “Ow. Don’t make me laugh.”

After a moment, she looks to Director Danvers. “Did you see what you needed to?”

Danvers nods, giving Lena’s blanketed toes a pat.

“Yup. Now we know where the armor needs to go.”


	13. Chapter 13

Slowly, Lena’s life begins to settle into a new groove. She hesitates to call it a path, as she doesn’t know where it’s heading, but it starts to take on a shape she enjoys.

The outcome of the sparring match makes Lena realize she knows little about her new condition, and so instead of waiting for the discoveries to hit her like a roundhouse kick to the chest– which she can attest now is not pleasant– she sets about studying the kryptonite and her new anatomy.

Director Danvers helps, granting Lena access to her personal lab– which soon becomes Lena’s in all but name only (which too, eventually becomes Lena’s). Kara is allowed nowhere near her when Lena peels back her soft lead breastplate, to take readings and samples.

Researching the kryptonite consumes her, until one day she pages Director Danvers to her lab. When the director arrives Lena is pacing, her features drawn with worry.

“What’s wrong?” Danvers asks.

“I’ve been studying the kryptonite,” Lena declares.

Danvers puts her hands on her hips, but is careful to keep her expression one of patience. “Which is a secret to no one,” she reminds Lena.

“Yes, but–” Lena wrings her hands, clearly anxious. “I think I can make more.”

That gives Danvers pause. Her hands come off her hips and she steps closer to Lena as though someone might overhear them.

“Is yours…?”

“Synthesized? No. Thank god.” The thought that Lillian may have already cracked Lena’s same research already has crossed her mind, but for now, it seems, Cadmus is limited to whatever natural resources they can get their hands on. “But if I can do it, it may not be long before others can as well.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, Luthor,” Director Danvers warns. “You’ve made more progress in three months than the cumulative fifteen years the DEO has studied kryptonite.”

“That’s the other thing,” Lena continues. “I’m hesitant to continue.”

“But generating more kryptonite, potentially more stable kryptonite, for use, will only be of benefit to you.”

“But not to Kara. I’m not entirely comfortable generating kryptonite that could be used against her if one day the president decides he doesnt like aliens.” Lena looks to the director for guidance. “What would you do?”

Director Danvers hesitates. “I can’t answer that for you,” she says finally. “You just have to do what you think is right. But whatever you do decide, I’ve got your back.”

Lena offers a frustrated, but grateful smile. “Thank you, Director.”

“Between us, it’s Alex.” Alex heads for the door, shooting Lena a glance over her shoulder. “And until you decide? We never had this conversation.”

—-

No matter how Lena tries to justify it, she can’t bring herself to commit to synthesizing more kryptonite. Not when she can already spot how her formulas could be tweaked to pack more destructive power into each crystal matrix. So instead, her research takes an expected turn towards her existing kryptonite.

Namely, isolating the energy that powers her internal systems from the radiation that’s so poisonous to Kara.

It takes her months of trials and countless errors. Then, one day, she pages Supergirl to the lab. To Kara’s surprise, she finds the door locked when she arrives.

“Lena?” she calls.

Lena turns to face her, features grave with apprehension.

“I need your help with an experiment,” Lena tells her.

“Okay…”

“I have a new form of kryptonite. I need– I need to know how it makes you feel. So when I open the door, I need you to tell me if it hurts. Or makes you nauseous, or–”

“Kills me?” Kara jokes. Lena goes pale. Kara quickly scrambles. “I’m kidding, Lena. I trust you. Let me in.”

When they open, the doors only slide apart by an inch, nothing more. Kara waits. “Well?”

“You don’t feel anything?”

“Should I?”

The doors open the rest of the way, but before Kara can set a foot inside Lena’s barking at her to stop. Kara obeys. When Lena gestures to the ground, Kara lowers her gaze to spot taped marks at set intervals leading to Lena’s workstation.

“Five minutes at each marker. Wait for my signal before you move to the next.”

“You should have warned me to bring my e-reader,” Kara drawls, but she gamely steps up to the first mark at Lena’s signal. As she waits, she fills Lena in on the goings on around the DEO and the greater world beyond.

“You know Vasquez is going on vacation next month? Well so is Addams, and when I asked them, both said they were going to Ibiza. What are the chances–?”

“No reaction at three meters. Next.”

Kara steps forward to the next mark, and continues her conversation without missing a beat. Lena hums and uh huhs appropriately, barely listening as she continues to monitor her machines and Kara’s status. Before Kara moves forward again, Lena interrupts to ask her questions.

“Any shortness of breath?”

“Nope.”

“Nausea?”

“No.”

“Heartburn? Indigestion?”

Kara smiles, but keeps her ill timed joke to herself. “Nuh uh.”

She issues no’s to vertigo, tinnitis, and fatigue as well.

“Please proceed to the next mark.”

Kara obeys, and picks up her conversation where she left off. The process repeats three, four times, until Kara steps inside the final line joining Lena at the table.

One final round of questions later, and Kara flaps her arms against her sides. “So, did I pass?”

Lena blinks at her readings, looking for any hint of a reason to doubt them. But after a long moment, she finds she can’t.

“This was a prank, wasn’t it?” Kara drawls. She nudges Lena playfully, grinning. “You just wanted to see me.”

Turning towards her, Lena’s face is anything but teasing.

“Oh-kay, so no prank,” Kara surmises. “But that’s good, right? You did it!” She looks around excitedly. “So, where is it?”

Slowly, Lena unbuttons her shirt. “Right here.”

The protective lead brace she’s worn since her rescue is gone. The kryptonite nested against Lena’s sternum glows as brightly as ever, but the searing pain doesn’t come, for either of them. Kara blinks, stunned.

“Oh my… Rao,” she breathes. She stares at it, studying it closely before looking back up at Lena in concern. “How do you feel? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Lena says. “All systems are operating on par by every metric we know of. If anything, it’s more stable.”

“But the radioactivity–”

“Different isotopes,” Lena offers.

Kara stares and stares, until Lena can’t stand the silence any longer. “Please say something–”

“Can I hug you?”

The question comes plaintive and soft, timid in its hope. Lena starts, then breaks into a relieved smile.

“Yeah.”

In an instant, Lena is enveloped in warm, solid arms. Everything about it is perfect: the pressure, the placement, the way it seems to last forever. Lena tucks her chin against Kara’s neck, burrowing her nose into blonde hair.

“Hi,” she murmurs.

Kara grins against her shoulder. “Hi.”

Neither of them make any move to pull away.


	14. Chapter 14

Even with her new kryptonite, Lena still has nightmares more often than she doesn’t. She’s given a bunk in the overnight barracks of the DEO and every night she falls into bed at the point of mental exhaustion, hoping it will be enough to keep her asleep.

Some nightmares aren’t so bad: she wakes up the next morning with tears on her cheeks and only an echo of misery. But some nights– some nights she wakes up with a scream and panic in her throat, feeling as trapped and alone as she did in that warehouse, under her mother’s knife and dispassionate gaze.

On those nights, even in the barracks, Lena's never alone. Kara wakes with her from the bunk next to hers, and when after the fear passes, Kara lies awake with her, speaking softly in the darkened room.

“You’re an inspiration, you know,” Kara murmurs. At Lena’s scoff, she’s quick to continue. “No, really! Look at you– you’ve been through so much, and you’re still… you’re still trying.”

Still, Lena snorts. In the shadows, Kara frowns. “Why is it so hard for you to see how amazing you are?”

“Because I’ve still…. lost myself,” Lena says. “Because everything I’ve done to reclaim my power has been centered solely on what they did to me. Even now, its like theyre still in control, and–” Lena pauses. The late hour and dark quiet of the barracks feels intimate. Like any she says can’t be unsaid, giving her words power like never before. But Kara waits, patiently, and Lena’s moved to fill the silence.

“My whole life I’ve been defined by others,” she continues. “Before, I was able to accept it because at least I knew who I was, but now… they’ve even taken that from me.”

And that’s the bone shattering truth: she doesn’t know who she is anymore. Her entire existence revolves around the Kryptonite in her chest, and even as she begins to take control, she sees no end in sight. She can alter the Kryptonite as much as she wants, but it will always be there. It– and the horrific trauma visited upon her by her mother– will always define her.

Kara reaches between the bunks and rests her hand on Lena’s shoulders.

“It gets easier,” is all she offer.

Lena’s eyes fill with helpless, frustrated tears.

“What if I don’t want it to?”

—

Lena’s new kryptonite provides enough energy to sustain her and more, so she sets about applying her kryptonite research to what she remembers of the schematics for her brother’s Lexosuit. In a month she has a working prototype, and as her training with Alex continues, she becomes Supergirl’s go-to back-up when a situation gets hairy.

She isn’t a hero– not like Supergirl is. She doesn’t go on patrol, and her exosuit doesn’t fly like her brother’s. Lena relegates herself to the B-team, arriving at the head of the DEO reinforcements.

“It’s for the best,” Alex points out one night after hours, in her office with a cold cup of coffee. They’re a frequent sight, the three of them– the Director, Supergirl, and Lena.

“But we could be patrolling together,” Kara whines. “What could be better than that?”

“My mother won’t take kindly to the fact that she lost the culmination of her work,” Lena reminds her.

Alex nods. “If Cadmus hasn’t caught wind of you by now, it’s best to keep a low profile.”

Kara has no rebuttal to that. As much as she might like the idea of a partner in superheroing, she won’t risk Lena’s safety.

But Cadmus ends up on their doorstep regardless, in the form of a talking head hacking the emergency broadcast, promising violence on the aliens of National City. Only then does Lena start to become more of a presence. The press catches sight of her occasionally, her features hidden beneath the helmet of her suit, and begin to bandy about names for the new vigilante. They speculate whether the new figure is somehow related to Supergirl, or connected in any way at all. It all happens at a distance, with Lena trying very hard to keep from becoming a sensation like Supergirl.

But it all comes to a head one afternoon when Lena backs Kara up against a significantly oversized alien. They make a good team, and keep the collateral damage to a minimum. As a result, there’s plenty of press and spectators who surge in for questions and autographs. To Lena’s shock and alarm, they all center on her, not Supergirl.

Of the barrage of questions, only one stands out in Lena’s senses.

“What do you call yourself?”

The question stops her short. Lena looks to Supergirl for assistance, but Kara only shrugs from within her own circle of admirers.

Lena has a desicion to make.

After a long moment, Lena reaches up and removes her helmet.

Gasps issue from the people around her as long hair settles against her armored shoulders. No one recognized her when Lena first saved Kara’s life, hollowed out by trauma and near starvation. But now, months after regaining weight and healthful living, her cheeks are smooth and full, her Luthor jawline unmistakeable sharp.

“My name is Lena Luthor.”


	15. Chapter 15

Lena’s decision to reveal herself isn’t entirely well thought out. In the weeks that follow, the media outlets flood with speculation about her veracity, her intentions, and her whereabouts for the past year. Considering Lena bolted after giving the reporters her name, their confusion isn’t entirely unwarranted, but Lena has no intention of giving them any further details.

Reclaiming her name is one thing. Revealing the current condition is another.

“The last thing the world needs to hear is that there’s a Luthor running around without a heart. Literally.”

Kara rolls her eyes at the weak joke. “Nobody blames you for your brother’s actions, Lena. If they knew what happened–”

“They’ll say I should have seen it coming. It’s all in the family, Kara. My brother killed me and my mother resurrected me. This is my chance to start fresh, so just… let me have it.”

The unexpected outcome of it all is that Lena no longer needs to hide. Slowly, she starts to venture out into the city with Kara, both with armor and without, and for the first time since her rescue, she gets to enjoy some of the things she used to.

Like watching the geese in the park, and window shopping in midtown. At first, she’s able to get away unnoticed by simply wearing casual outfits, but as the media coverage persists, more and more people start to notice her. It soon becomes clear that Lena needs to make another decision.

“I have to make a statement,” she says one night, lying in her bunk next to Kara. They’ve just come out of a sparring session, and are sweaty and tired, but still Lena’s mind races.

Kara looks at her, not lifting her head. “Are you sure?”

“No. But… if I don’t, I’ll just lose control of my narrative all over again.”

“Okay,” comes the easy response. “I’ll support you, whatever you decide.”

Lena turns to look at her. “I’m going to need you to do more than that.”

—

“You want her to WHAT?” Alex asks, when they tell her the plan.

Lena doesn’t blink an eye. “I want Kara to leverage an exclusive interview with me to get her old job back.”

Alex looks like she’s going to pop a blood vessel. She eyes Lena, then turns her incredulous gaze on Kara. “And what do you want?”

Kara shuffles awkwardly in place, eyes on her shoes. “I… am okay with it.”

It had taken some convincing. Well, not so much convincing as talking Kara out of her own pessimism. Her career was over, she’d claimed when Lena first shared her idea. Supergirl was her job now. She was needed at the DEO more than anywhere else. The world needed Supergirl.

“But what does Supergirl need?” Lena had asked.

Now, Alex doesn’t seem convinced. “Really? Because you were miserable there before you quit. Are you really ready to go back?”

Kara shrugs, sheepish and uncertain both. Lena shifts protectively in front of her. “Don’t worry,” she drawls, “I’m sure she’ll still help at DEO if you ask nicely.”

“That’s not why I’m concerned,” Alex scoffs.

“Then why do you care so much about what Kara chooses to do with her civilian life, Director?”

Alex pauses on the verge of retort. Then she rocks back on her heels, making pointed eye contact with Kara. Kara touches Lena shoulder, moving out from behind her.

“Because she’s my sister.”

Lena blinks in surprise, then freezes as her brain restructures itself to absorb this new information. “Oh. That is… not what I expected.”

“What were you expecting?”

“…doesn’t matter.”

Alex huffs, irritation flaring. “Kara, I don’t think I need to remind you of what it was like when you were working at CatCo–”

“I loved CatCo. I still do.” Kara’s shoulders lift. “Looking back, I don’t think CatCo was the reason I was miserable. It’s just the part of my life that suffered the most. But–” She looks at Lena, shoulders squaring. “Things are different now. I can’t be Supergirl all my life. I need more. I always have.”

With a sigh, Alex relents. “Fine. What do you need from me?”

—

James is nothing if not surprised to see Kara slip into his office one afternoon. She’s clearly nervous, fidgeting with her glasses and shrinking into herself. Even so, he’s glad to see her.

“Kara, hey! Wow, it’s been a while. How are… things?”

He knows her secret, but after their breakup and Kara’s unexpected departure from CatCo, they’d drifted apart.

“Good, good. Yeah,” Kara stammers. “I, uh, I was wondering if we could talk, for a second.”

James grins. “Yeah. Of course, of course. Come on in.”

He comes around his desk, meeting Kara at the couches. A little thrill rushes through him at their proximity, before he shakes himself out of it. He never got a chance to settle back into frienship with Kara, and he regrets the distance between them.

When they sit, he tries to ease her nerves with a grin. “What’s happening?”

Kara smooths her hands on the tops of her thighs, and takes a deep breath. Then, she straightens and turns to face him.

“I came here to discuss the possibility of me getting my job back.”

“Your job,” James repeats. “Here. At CatCo.”

Kara nods. “Yes. At CatCo.”

“Oh… I don’t know, Kara.”

“I know it’s a tall ask–”

James barks a laugh. “A tall ask? It’s been over a year, and I hate to say it, but Snapper hasn’t gotten any better since you left.”

“He wasn’t why I left…”

“I actually figured it was because of me.”

Kara’s eyes widen, and her cheeks heat with a flush as she scrambles to deny it. “James, no– that’s not–”

“You don’t need to explain anything to me, Kara, really… but I have to say, a rehire would be a tough sell with Snapper, I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to sell him anything,” Kara rebuts, her voice steeling. Her gaze took on a hard glint. “You’re his boss.”

James nods. “That’s true, but I wouldn’t be doing you any favors by forcing you on him.”

“I’m not asking for any favors–”

“Kara.”

“You know what I mean. I’m ready to take on anything Snapper has in store, I’m ready to pull weight, and I’m ready to go the distance. And you know the kind of person I am, James. I won’t let you down.”

James sighs. “I know. But… I just can’t do it.”

Kara nods, adjusting her glasses. “I can prove to you that CatCo needs me– will be better to have me on board.”

There’s something familiar in Kara’s voice now, and James realizes that he’s seeing Supergirl poking through. Whatever had so shaken her a year ago, she’s ready to overcome it.

“And what’s that?” he asks.

“Lena Luthor.”

James pauses. “What about her?”

“She’s agreed to an exclusive with CatCo– on one condition.”

“With you.”

“As a fully hired and salaried CatCo employee.”

It’s the one thing James knows he can’t refuse. Every media outlet in the country is clamoring for an interview with Lena Luthor, and here she’s been walked right into his office on the wings of the one former employee his editor-in-chief cannot stand. That said…

With a scoop like Lena Luthor, CatCo would survive if Snapper Carr walked out.

James hesitates, out of principle if nothing else. “You really have Lena Luthor on lock?”

Taking out her phone, Kara opens her contacts and with just a few taps of her thumb has a video chat ringing. As James watches, the black comes to life with the visage of Lena Luthor.

“Kara, hi,” says the tinny voice. Despite likely expecting the call, the woman is clearly happy to see Kara.

Kara blushes, fiddling with her glasses once more. “Hi, Lena. I, um, I have James here, and he was wondering–”

“Mr. Olsen.” Suddenly, Lena Luthor is all business. “I expect Kara has already explained the situation.”

James nods. “She has.”

“I am willing to work with CatCo, so long as I interview exclusively with Kara Danvers.”

“Editorial will have input on the question list.”

“Which will be screened in advance, and received with Kara’s contract, signed and countersigned.”

James doesn’t necessarily like being dictated to, but Lena’s tone is nothing less than professional. It’s as though he’s talking to another executive, and negotiation is a tactic he’s grown accustomed to.

“We can work with that.”

“At 10% above Kara’s exit salary.”

Ohhhhh… James chafes at that. Kara starts, then flushes– clearly, she hadn’t expected this. But there’s no negotiation in Lena’s tone, so he chooses to take the high road. He nods.

“All right. We’ll be in touch.”


	16. Chapter 16

Lena walks into CatCo armored in a three piece suit and stiletto heels that add four inches to her height. With Kara in more practical shoes, Lena breaks about even, which lets her believe she has just as much presence as the disguised girl of steel.

Eyes follow them as Kara leads her to the elevator and through the bullpen, and Lena keeps her head high, eyes scanning for suspicious behavior. To her relief, she finds nothing more sinister than unabashed interest.

Kara guides her to a relatively small studio already prepared for their arrival with film cameras, seats, and studio lighting. Lena feels Kara grow tense at the sight of the set up; she gives her friend’s wrist a gentle squeeze of reassurance before breaking away.

A flurry of makeup, mic checks and hair touch ups later, an intern counts down on three fingers. “We’re live in three, two, one…”

Kara introduces them both, and starts with a few lowball questions to get them comfortable. Then she moves on to the million-dollar question, and the purpose of the entire interview.

“So, Miss Luthor–”

“Lena, please,” Lena corrects gently with a smile.

Kara grins back. “Lena. There has been quite a few questions on everyone’s minds since your appearance last month, but one has been dominating all the others: where have you been for the past thirteen months?”

Alex helped Lena craft her cover story. Lena slips into it easily.

“Unfortunately, contrary to what everyone thinks, the helicopter crash was not staged– my brother hired a mercenary to kill me, and nearly succeeded. It happened around the same time I discovered my mother was a leading member of the terrorist organization known as Cadmus, and was planning an attack on me herself.”

Kara’s eyes widen as though this were her first time hearing it. “That’s almost unbelievable.”

“As a Luthor, attempts on my life aren’t entirely uncommon, but the near miss of the crash forced me to drastic measures. It was decided that the safest course of action would be to fake my death and recuperate in protective custody.”

Sympathy softens Kara’s features. “That must have been incredibly difficult for you. I can’t imagine what it must have been like trying to heal under those circumstances.”

Lena smiles with a sadness not entirely scripted. “There were definitely some low points, but I’m lucky in that I had the best medical care and significant resources at my disposal to speed my recovery. There are many people who don’t.”

With a nod, Kara adjusts her glasses, then turns the page of her notepad. “Cadmus has been sowing a lot of fear throughout National City these past few months. How does it feel to know your mother may be partly responsible?”

“There is no partly, Kara. She is responsible: while we don’t yet have confirmation as to whether she is the head of the snake, Cadmus would not have the same reach or capabilities without her resources.”

Lena pauses there, taking a moment to take the edge off her tone. But her gaze doesn’t soften.

“It makes me angry. Not only for what she planned to do to me, but for what she plans to do to this city. It’s abhorrent, and I condemn it with every fiber of my being.”

“Given the interest in you and your story these past few weeks, there’s a good chance everyone in National City is watching this right now.” Kara meets Lena’s gaze. “If your mother is one of them, is there anything you would like to say to her?”

The question isn’t one of CatCo’s screened list: Kara adds it on the fly, and Lena’s chest lurches painfully at the thought of being even a camera feed away from her mother. But she steels her spine and nods.

“Yes, there is.” Lena looks into the camera. “I’m going to stop you. Whatever you have planned, whatever atrocities you intend to visit on this city, will come to nothing. I will not stop, and I will not rest until you are brought to justice.” A dark smile of challenge curls her lips ever so slightly. “I’m coming for you.”

Silence follows for a long moment, filling the room until Kara straightens in her seat, pulling attention back to her. “Let’s take a brief break: when we come back, we’ll discuss exactly how you came to know Supergirl.”

Lena is still thrumming with energy as the red light above the cameras turn off. If she still had her old kryptonite, she’d have reduced the room to rubble, but as it is her skin crawls with anticipation, itching lash out. But only Kara comes close enough, her gaze and voice soft.

“You okay?” she asks.

“No.”

“Sorry I sprang that on you.”

Lena swallows, forcing herself to relax. “Don’t be. It’s time she knows she’s the one being hunted.”

Pitching her voice even lower, Kara leans closer. “We’ll help you,” she promises.

“I know,” Lena replies easily. “I was counting on it.”

The rest of the interview passes more smoothly, as Lena glibly fields questions about her relationship with Supergirl, and how exactly a Luthor came to be working alongside the cousin of her brother’s most hated enemy.

“Supergirl is an absolute treasure to spend time with, and I cherish our friendship,” Lena answers with a sly smirk. “The fact it would piss off my brother is only icing on the cake.”

The only hiccup comes when James– who’d been observing from off-camera– approaches Kara towards the end of the interview and slips her a small piece of paper. Kara reads it, visibly surprised by the intrusion. When Kara’s eyes lift to meet hers, Lena knows that James has added an impromptu question of his own.

But Kara doesn’t seem concerned, so Lena remains relaxed as the reporter straightens and leans forward.

“We do have one last question for you, Lena, and I think its one all of National City would be eager to know.”

Lena nods. “Fire away.”

“What do you intend to do now?”

Oh. Alex hasn’t helped her with a cover for that. Before Lena can summon a response, Kara finishes with an add-on.

“Do you intend to resume your position at LuthorCorp?”

Lena’s mind races along the track the leading question provides her. It hasn’t even occured to Lena that she could do so, and as she rapidly considers the option, a slow smile forms.

“Yes,” she says, holding Kara’s gaze. “Yes, I do.”


	17. Chapter 17

Walking out of CatCo, Lena feels as drained as she did when she was dying. Only Kara keeping pace beside her gives her the energy to saunter out with her head high, even after they make to sidewalk outside.

Standing on the concrete, the sounds of the city wash over her. Lena takes a moment, inhaling warm air until it filled her lungs and calmed her racing thoughts. Even so, her hands keep their faint tremor.

Kara nudges her. “You need food,” she says. “Come on. I know a place.”

‘A place’ turns out to be the back door of a chinese restaurant. When Kara knocks, an employee pokes their head out, their features breaking into a wide smile at the sight of her. Kara slips into Mandarin, ordering two of her usual order.

Fifteen minutes later, Lena follows Kara back onto Hope Street, her arms full of food. Similarly burdened with her own order, Kara leads her to an apartment building, and walks them up to the fourth and top floor. The loft apartment Lena steps into is dusty and dim, lit only by the overcast sky beyond the windows.

“Just a sec,” Kara mutters. In a burst of wind she zooms around the apartment, and the next moment the space comes to life. The dust disappears and the lights come on, bathing the large room in a warm, inviting glow.

“So, ah,” Kara says, “this is my… apartment.”

Lena stares at her, stunned.

“Kara.”

“Yeah?”

“Why in the hell have you been spending every waking moment at the DEO when you have this?” Lena gestures to the space around her.

Kara at least has the decency to look sheepish. “Oh, well… it just, hasn’t really felt like a home, I guess. For a long time. And I like spending time with you and Alex, so with you at the DEO…”

Lena rolls her eyes, but lets it go. She sets her food on the center island marking the kitchen and starts to dig through it. “Come on. I’m starving.”

—-

They eat on the couch, quietly gorging themselves on lo mein, eggrolls and kung pao chicken. Lena is able to turn her brain off while eating, but as soon as the food disappears the interview catches up with her. With a groan, Lena tips her head back against the couch cushions.

“Shit.”

Kara glances at her. “Big decisions today.”

It’s the right decision. Lena’s work at LuthorCorp before the crash had focused on rooting out the deepest seeds of Lex’s influence within the company. Now after a year of stagnation, Lena is absolutely certain that her mother is still pulling strings and siphoning resources for Cadmus’ use.

But resuming her work at LuthorCorp would be no small feat, and throws her entire life back into chaos.

Lena looks around the room. “I’m going to need a place to live.”

“Oh. Yeah.” Kara adjusts her glasses. “I suppose it would be weird for a CEO to live in the barracks of a covert federal agency.”

Lena’s thrust her life back into a bubble, and suddenly she mourns the brief sense of freedom she’s enjoyed these past few weeks. She’d just started coming to terms with what she is, and now she’ll have to hide herself again. Being discovered as Supergirl’s vigilante compatriot allows her some transparency, but as far as the world knows, Lena is still totally human.

Toeing the line between human and not will be burden in and of itself.

She’ll need to hire a security detail– a fact that fills her with guilt. She’ll also need a legal team to make her alive again, in the eyes of the law. No doubt the DEO will be able to help manufacture enough evidence to support the cover story to restore her legal status. There’s a million things and more she needs to do, but all she has the energy for is to sit quietly beside her friend, enjoying the quiet.

“…you could stay here,” Kara suggests softly.

Lena blinks, then rolls her head to look at her. “YOU should stay here,” Lena points out.

Kara shrugs. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“At least until you find your own place, you can stay here with me. I mean, we’re already practically roommates at the DEO, so…”

Lena finds herself answering before fully thinking it through. “Okay.”

“Okay?” Kara echoes. She blinks in surprise, then blushes. “Okay.”


	18. Chapter 18

Wresting back control of LuthorCorp is easier than Lena expects. She’s forgotten that she was voted in once, that the shareholders had actively wanted her in the lead, wanted her to pull them back from the brink. It doesn’t hurt her case that the company floundered even further after her presumed death. Who better to bring it back to life, the board surmised, than the ressurrected Luthor herself?

Towards that end, Lena hires an army of people to bring her back to life. She recruits a publicity firm to handle the media, she hires a stylist team to shop an entire wardrobe for, and an accounting agency to figure exactly how much money she has to her name.

Lena allows her army free reign to put her life back in order, and in the meantime she devotes her time to resuming her battle for the good opinion of National City. As a vigilante, being Supergirl’s friend helps a great deal, but for Lena herself, she has work to do.

Through a series of follow up articles, Lena shares herself with Kara, and by extension CatCo’s readership. At LuthorCorp, she ingrains herself in the daily workings of the company. She’s already laid much of the groundwork before the crash, but she’s still full of nerves as she re-introduces herself to each and every department.

She’s keenly aware that a handshake from her could now snap bones, so one corner of her mind is always conscious of her strength, always careful. Part of her now recognizes why Kara spent so much time at the DEO, where everyone knows her strength and how deadly she could be– they know to keep their distance.

At L-Corp, everyone presses close, eager for smiles and soft words of welcome backs. Lena remains on the razor’s edge of awareness, leaving her drained by the time she walks back into the apartment she shares with Kara.

“Oh, wow,” Kara mutters when Lena returns after her first day. It takes Lena a moment to realize her friend is staring, and a moment longer to remember that Kara had been called away for an early DEO emergency that morning, and that this is the first time they’ve seen each other all day. Kara’s already comfy in pajamas and an NCU sweatshirt, but Lena is still dressed for the office, in an outfit her stylist selected for her.

Kara blinks, her eyes traveling all the way down to Lena’s feet, arched in killer heels. Only then does she shake herself out of it.

“Oh, wow,” she repeats, this time less stunned and more concerned. “You must be exhausted.”

Lena huffs, rolling her eyes. “You have no idea.”

She’s been sleeping on the sofa’s daybed at night, but at the moment its folded up into the couch. Lena clicks her way over and slumps into the increasingly familiar cushions, chucking off her shoes haphazardly.

Kara scurries over and hands her a bowl of pasta. Lena accepts it with a grateful smile and waits for Kara to join her on the couch with her own bowl before she tucks in. Its simple, just a snack of buttered noodles to pick them up, but Lena devours it in record time.

“How’s CatCo?”

Kara grimaces. “Awful. Snapper hates me. Which is actually normal for him, but… some of the others have joined in this time. A little less thuggishly, but still.”

Lena frowns. “Wait ‘til christmas. They’ll be thanking you for their holiday bonus.”

“I don’t want them to like me because I helped get them money,” Kara counters. “I want them to like me because I’m nice. Or good at my job.”

Lena smiles. “I give them another week before they’re eating out of your hand.” When Kara looks at her, she shrugs knowingly. “Isn’t that about how long it took you to break through to me?”

Kara scoffs, thumping her with a pillow. “You’re different.”

“Am I?”

“Well, yeah. You’re…. you.”

“That explains everything, thank you.”

—

Lena doesn’t patrol with Supergirl anymore– the district attorney’s office serves a cease and desist the morning after her first interview with Kara airs, xiting that having such a high profile figure running amok on the streets would only incite chaos, not prevent it. But the DA’s reach doesn’t extend to the DEO, and so when Supergirl reaches out for help investigating the strange rash of young adults deliberately in harm’s way in the hopes of being saved by the hero, Lena readily agrees.

With Kara in her guise as a reporter, they track the group to a meeting space, and discover that it’s actually a religious group– devoted to Supergirl.

“Miss Luthor!”

Lena’s recognized immediately. Kara bristles at the exclamation, but Lena squeezes her wrist in reassurance. She can handle a room full of disillusioned young adults, but if anyone recognized Kara, they were done.

A slender man with a wet-eyed look approaches them. “It is an honor to have you here, Miss Luthor. Any friend of Supergirl’s is a friend of ours. How did you learn of our group?”

Lena flashes one of the flyers they’d used to find the dingy little room. “We received one of these. What exactly is this?”

“You’ve arrived just in time to find out,” the man says with a simpering sort of smile. “Please, find a seat, and make yourselves comfortable.”

Sharing a look, Lena and Kara make their way to the rows of chairs, settling in towards the back. The meeting opens with a girl who shares her story of rescue– one entirely genuine, not fabricated like the recent arsons and trespasses.

When a young man follows, then an older woman, Kara realizes she’s saved all of these people. She doesn’t feel honored– she feels sick. But Lena has her eye on the leader, who introduces himself as Thomas Coville. There’s something about him that rubs her the wrong way, and the moment they leave she says as much to Kara.

“I get that being saved from certain death could turn someone’s life around,” she hisses in a low voice. “But starting a religion? No one does that unless they want power, and when someone wants power, that makes them dangerous.”

She resolves to get close to him, and to everyone’s surprise, it’s shockingly easy to do so. All it takes is modifying her cover story so that it’s Supergirl who pulled her from the fiery helicopter crash and whisked her away to anonymity– and she’s in. It takes almost a month before Coville hints that he’s got something big planned.

When he leads Lena and the rest of his congregation to the basement of the National City sports stadium, Lena puts a finger to her ear.

“Now.”

Supergirl and the DEO swarm the basement. They begin arresting people, and shuffling them all out. The last to go is Coville, but the man is anything but perturbed.

“By Rao’s will,” he says, a sentiment echoed by his followers. None of them resist. Only then does Lena catch sight of the betahedron in one corner of the basement.

“Is that…?”

It powers up, its light pulsing more quickly. Supergirl cries out, dropping to her knees. Lena rushes to her side, only to jerk back when she sees her friend’s skin threaded green kryptonite. Pressing the button on her watch, her vigilante suit forms around her– she’d lined it with lead in case her kryptonite ever failed. But Kara continues to groan, and Lena realizes she isn’t the culprit this time.

“The betahedron!” she calls. It’s starting to pulse faster now, which can only mean one thing. “It’s gonna blow– get everyone out, now!”

“There’s a packed house upstairs,” Alex says over comms. “There’s no way to evacuate in time. You’ll have to find a way to disarm it.”

“It’s a fucking alien probe, Alex!” There might not BE a way to disarm it. Behind her, Lena can hear Kara struggling for breath. She can’t do anything to disarm it, but she can’t do nothing, either. A dozen ideas fire through her brain, but all of them are discarded as usless.

All but one.

With only a moment’s hesitation, Lena approaches the betahedron and punches a hole through its plating, peeling the outer layer back until she can see the pulsing green crystal within.

Removing her gauntlet, Lena pages her comms. “Director Danvers!”

“You got something, Luthor?”

Lena takes a deep breath. “Maybe. If it works, I’m going to be radioactive as hell.” She looks over her shoulder, meeting Kara’s pained gaze.

“No matter what happens, don’t let Supergirl touch my fucking body.”

Kara’s eyes grow wide with realization. “Lena, NO!”

Lena thrusts her arm into the betahedron and grips the kryptonite with all her strength. She screams as the radioactive energy crackles up her arm towards her chest, seeking it’s grounding point in the crystal embedded there. The manufactured kryptonite absorbs the energy, buffering and containing it for long, perilous moments before the first cracks begin to form.

Lena hopes it’ll last long enough to diffuse the kryptonite energy of the bomb and neutralize its explosive power.

As her senses go dark, all she can do is hold on with all her might, and not let go.


	19. Chapter 19

Director Danvers is already scowling when Lena wakes up. “Your kryptonite failed,” she declares. “You’re lucky you made spares.”

“Is that luck, though?”

“Don’t get cheeky.”

Kara only sighs when Lena meets her gaze. “I wish you wouldn’t do that.”

“It worked, didn’t it?”

“Not the point.”

The point is that not everything is the same after Lena is cleared by medical and goes home. Kara is quiet, barely able to meet her gaze. Lena, for her part, doesn’t know what to say either. She compensates by putting in more time in the office. Luckily, there’s no shortage of work to be done, with her out of commission for several days.

She barely sees Kara all week, until one night Lena receives a knock on her door.

“Enter,” she calls distractedly. She doesn’t set her papers aside until Kara clears her throat, pulling Lena’s attention to her. “Hi.”

“Hi.” Kara fidgets, pushing her glasses highee on her nose. “Can we talk?”

“Of course,” Lena responds. Kara comes to sit in one of the visitor chairs in front of Lena’s desk. Lena sits, and waits, but Kara can’t seem to find the words to start. Lena starts for her. “You’re angry with me.”

“Angry–!” Kara stands, pacing anxiously. “Angry? Rao, Lena, I’m not angry, I’m– I’m–” She rounds on Lena with fire in her eyes. “You almost died!”

“It happens.”

“It– Lena!”

“It is the foundation of our relationship, after all.”

Kara freezes. She stares at Lena, until Lena gives her a devilish grin. Only then does Kara crack, breathing a soft laugh. Suddenly, the tension between them evaporates.

“There you are,” Lena murmurs.

“Lena…” Kara takes a deep breath. “I’m not angry. But… you scared me.”

Lena nods. “I know. And I’m sorry. But there was no time to hesitate, you know that.”

“I know. I just wish… I wish you weren’t in a position to make that decision.”

Their gazes hold for a long, heavy moment. Lena nods. “You know that’s not your fault though, right?”

“Yeah. I do. But that doesn’t make it any easier.” Kara’s gaze softens even further. “I know you already are but…. will you just promise me you’ll be more careful?”

Lena smiles.

“I promise.”

—

For the next week, Lena is able to keep her promise. Things between her and Kara settle back into normal, and Lena keeps better hours just to have time to spend with her roommate, catching up on the shows Kara insists she watches. Lena’s simply grateful for her friend’s sunny mood, and the closeness that resumes between them.

The next time Lena is called into the field is when the DEO tracks down a secondary meeting place for Coville’s cult, apparently filled to the brim with Kryptonian artifacts and writings. Lena runs point, in case further kryptonite is stored there.

“All clear,” she announces when her scans come back clean. Kara enters behind her, pausing at the sight of the remnants of her home.

“How did he find all these?”

Lena doesn’t have an answer. There’s more here than even Lex had managed to track down. Her eyes catch on a small statue– it’s carved from dark stone, and seems to Lena to be darkly feminine, unsettling and alluring.

“What’s this?” she asks.

Kara comes over to get a closer look. She studies it for a moment. “I think it’s a statue of Yuda Kal– a dark precursor to Rao.”

Mesmerized, Lena retracts her gauntlet to pick it up for a closer look, wary of damaging it. The moment her skin makes contact, pain sears across her senses, worse than anything she’s ever felt. Her vision fills with a hot white light, and the wall across from her explodes into shards of concrete before Lena clamps her eyes shut. The kryptonite in her chest pulses frantically, trying and failing to capture the energy flowing through her. This isn’t radiation– this is something else entirely.

The statue fractures in Lena’s grip: a portion of it sears itself to her palm, fusing itself to the skin. Even when she pries her hand open it clings to her, pouring more of whatever this is into Lena’s veins.

Distantly, Lena hears Kara telling her to stay still. A hand grasps her wrist to pin it in place, then hesitates.

Realizing what’s about to happen, Lena nods. “Do it!” she bellows.

She hears the zap of heat vision, followed by a hot flash of pain before the power abruptly ceases its course through her. Cracking one eye open, Lena’s relieved that her temporary heat vision has disappeared. She sags against the floor, desperately trying to catch her breath as she meets Kara’s terrified gaze.

“You promised,” Kara pants, “to be careful.”

Lena nods. This one is on her.

“Note to self: don’t touch anything.”


	20. Chapter 20

Getting ready for bed later that night is a familiar process. Kara cleans up the late night snack dishes while Lena heads into the bathroom to wash up and brush her teeth. When she’s finished, Kara slips in after her, leaving Lena to unfold the sofa and make up the sheets.

This time, however, Lena hesitates to climb into bed. She remains perched on the edge of the thin matress, the thin metal frame precariously supporting her titanium-reinforced body, and waits for Kara to re-emerge from the bathroom.

When she does, Kara’s eyes are solemn and heavy with an unspoken burden, and Lena knows her suspicions were correct: today has affected her friend more than she’d let on.

“Hey,” Lena says quietly. “You okay?”

Kara’s gaze flickers to hers, startled. “Yeah.” Her voice cracks halfway through the word. Then her lips begin to tremble. “No.”

Lena closes the distance between them without thinking, wrapping her arms around Kara in a gentle hug. “I’m so sorry, Kara. I can’t imagine how you must feel right now.”

“I always thought my cousin and I were the only things that survived Krypton, you know?” Kara mutters into Lena’s shoulder, her voice watery. “But there’s so much more that’s out there.”

“Do you think there are other Kryptonians on Earth?” Lena asks. Pulling away, she leads Kara towards the sofa bed. It won’t support the both of them, so they sit on the floor instead, leaning back against it. “Living under the radar?”

Kara shrugs, wiping her eyes. “There must be. Some of what Coville found might have been brought here by people who visited Krypton before the time of isolation, but a lot of it isn’t old enough for that. And some– some of it is so personal, Lena. Like the Book of Rao Coville was reading from… it was an illuminated manuscript dedicated to the House of Van. It would have been cherished for generations.”

That makes Lena frown. “Do you think he stole it?”

“Or someone was desperate enough to sell it.” Kara shrugs again, this time in frustration. “I hate that he found them.”

She pauses. Lena waits, until she continues more quietly, “I didn’t look for them.”

“There’s no way you could have known, Kara.”

“But I should have! I used to believe that Krypton’s destruction was sudden, but the truth is that the council saw it coming, and did nothing. The moment I learned the truth I should have suspected there might be others who fled. But I was too selfish.”

Lena arches an eyebrow. “If there’s one thing you’re not, it’s selfish. You were a child.”

“Well, I’m not anymore.”

Kara’s voice hardens, her eyes flashing with steely resolve.

“Okay.” Lena takes the shift in Kara’s tone in stride. “What do you want to do about it?”

“I don’t know,” Kara admits. “But I don’t Coville’s cult to be Rao’s only legacy on Earth.”

“Maybe it doesn’t have to be.” Lena nudges Kara gently. “Talk to James Olsen about doing an interview with Supergirl. Maybe she can share what Rao’s light is really about.”

Kara leans against Lena, letting her head rest on a cotton-clad shoulder. “Thank you, Lena. For being here.”

Lena loops an arm around her. She smiles.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

—

Kara takes Lena’s suggestion and speaks with James the next day. He okays the interview, promising to assign her a reporter who would let Supergirl guide the conversation.

It starts with questions about the recent cult, and whether there was any weight to their rhetoric.

“They came close to understanding, in some ways. They recognized Rao’s warmth, his benevolence. But what they didn’t understand is that their actions directly contradicted Rao’s teachings.”

“And how do you reconcile the fact that they were motivated by Supergirl’s own actions?”

On camera, Supergirl pauses thoughtfully. “Honestly, I can’t. My choice to help people wasn’t a decision founded on my faith in Rao. I chose to help others to honor the loss of my home world, to give my life as its final survivor to service of the world that took me in. To claim that I am somehow an avatar of Rao’s will would be… sacrilegious.”

Her interviewer nods. “And how does it feel to know that your religion was co-opted by people who didn’t take the time to learn its true meaning?”

“I think mostly I’m disappointed. Thomas Coville spent a great deal of time researching and studying Krypton, but he never once tried to learn from the people who lived there. If he had asked, I would have been happy to share anything he wanted to know.”

That much is true. It’s been a long time since Kara’s prayed to Rao, even longer since anyone asked her about him. But given the chance… she thinks she would have shared anything and everything with someone who genuinely wanted to know.

As the interview wraps up, Kara has a question of her own. “On Krypton, there’s a prayer that’s spoken when someone is leaving for a long journey. Would you mind if I spoke it now?”

Her interviewer nods enthusiastically. “Absolutely, please do.”

Already sitting tall in her seat, Supergirl crosses her wrists in front of her chest, curling her fingers into a pose she knows well. Lapsing into her mother tongue makes her eyes sting with tears, but she closes them, so no one else can see.

“We will see you in the parting of the light, and we will see in the dawn. Though the journey may be long, you are ever close to our hearts and Rao’s light.” The prayer purrs from her lips, but she doesn’t stop where she typically would; she continues.

“Rao is our guidance, Rao is our light, and in his witness, we shall meet again.”

If there are other Kryptonians on Earth, Kara knows she will likely never meet them. But she hopes they hear her prayer, and know that they are not alone.


	21. Chapter 21

Lena anxiously peers into the steaming wok, inhaling deeply before deciding to add another dash of sauce. It’s a stir fry she’s made a hundred times before, but this time is different. This time, it has to be perfect.

Her heart skips a beat when she hears Kara’s key in the lock. The door opens, and Kara steps inside with a wide grin on her face. “Hey! You’re home early!”

Lena smiles with a nod. “Yes, and dinner’s almost ready, so go get comfy.”

With a little squeal of delight Kara bounces over a gives her a hug. “Thank you! I love your stir fry.”

Let’s just hope she doesn’t screw it up. As Kara disappears into the bedroom, Lena takes the wok off the heat, erring on the side of caution before she ruined it by fussing with it half to death.

Lena picks at her portion while Kara nearly inhales her own, until Kara finally sets down her plate and reaches for Lena’s hand.

“Hey. Is everything okay?”

“Yeah,” Lena covers quickly. “Yes, of course.”

“Because you don’t look okay.”

“Gee, thanks…”

Kara shoots her a look. “You know what I mean.”

Relenting, Lena nods. “I know. You’re right. I just, have something to ask you, and I’m nervous about it.”

“You know you can ask me anything.”

Lena does know. Now almost a year since her rescue, she and Kara have become friends to the point Lena doesn’t think either of them had any secrets from the other. Even so, her belly flutters with anxiety.

“Right. Okay. So. You know I’ve been preparing the holiday fundraiser for L-Corp next week?”

Kara nods. “Of course.”

“Well, I was wondering if… maybe you’d like to… come.”

While Lena’s worst nightmare is that she’ll be turned down, the equally mortifying likelihood is that Kara will laugh at her nervousness. To her surprise, Kara does neither. She simply beams. “I’d love to!”

“Are you sure?” Lena rambles. “Because I’ll have to say hello to everyone so I probably won’t be able to stay with you the whole time, and I don’t want you to be bored in a room full of people you don’t know…”

“Lena,” Kara interrupts gently. “I know you’ll have things to do and people to do. But I’d love the opportunity to support you– even if its to stand in a roomful of people I don’t know.”

Lena melts in a relieved grin. “Okay. Thank you.”

Thank you???

What is she doing?

She makes it through the night, somehow, without digging herself deeper, and the next night. But even as she gets swept up in the preparations for the gala, Lena doesn’t lose sight of the fact Kara said yes.

The night before the event, Lena warns Kara that she’ll have to meet her at the party. “I’ll be at the hotel all day, so I’ll be getting ready there. But I’ll send a car for you, if you want.”

“Oh, I was planning on flying there,” Kara replies.

Lena eyes her, quietly judging.

“I’m KIDDING. A ride would be appreciated. Thank you.”

And so Lena has no idea what to expect when the event begins. At the start, she’s so overwhelmed with the transition from prep to guests that its all she can do to keep her head on straight. It’s not until almost an hour that she has a moment to catch her breath and wonder where Kara was. She casts her gaze around the room and– there.

Lena’s eyes find Kara like a magnet, standing by the string quartet with a glass in her hand. She looks long and graceful in a floor length gown of powder blue, with half of her hair pulled back with a jewel-studded clip.

As though sensing Lena’s gaze, Kara turns towards her, and breaks into a dazzling smile. Lena takes a step forward, only to be intercepted by the mayor. Over his shoulder, Kara catches her eye, lifting her glass in silent understanding.

After the mayor it’s the district attorney, and after the district attorney it’s someone else, and so on, until it’s hours later and Lena loses track of Kara entirely. She slips out into the lobby simply to catch her breath, but it’s there she finds Kara, chatting amiably with the bellhop.

At the sight of Lena, Kara breaks off her conversation and heads straight for her. Lena meets her halfway, immediately stepping into the embrace Kara offers.

“The party is so amazing, Lena. And you look amazing.”

Lena flushes at the compliment. She feels rather plain in her dark red dress next to Kara’s stunning blue. The style is far more conservative than she’d usually wear– a shallow boat neckline and diaphanous skirt to disguise the kryptonite and its mantle set in her ribs. But from Kara, the sentiment makes her feel as a beautiful as when she wore her plunging necklines and slinky bodices.

“Thank you, so do you. I’m– glad you came. Even if I haven’t exactly been a good host for you.”

Kara shakes her head. “Nope! I got a hug, you’ve officially fulfilled all hostess duties.”

Lena laughs, a sound echoed by a raucous round of laughter from inside the ballroom. It brings Lena back to her senses, and the impending sense of an assistant frantically looking for her. “The auction is about to start, so I should probably…”

“Go, be amazing. I’ll be cheering you on.”

Kara remains true to her word, cheering loudly when Lena is introduced to begin the bidding. To Lena’s surprise, she even bids on a piece of art donated by the Sinclair Family Foundation. She’s monstrously outbid, but Kara seems none the worse for losing out when their notifications blow up the following morning.

Someone had caught a picture of them hugging in the hotel lobby, and now the entire world seems to waiting on a razors edge to find out if Lena Luthor is dating reporter Kara Danvers.

Lena eyes Kara as she studies the picture carefully over coffee. Finally, she can’t take the silence any longer. “I’m sorry, Kara, if I had known…”

Kara blinks up at her, dumbfounded. “What, the picture? Oh, I am definitely getting this framed.”


	22. Chapter 22

Despite Kara’s patent joy over being included in Lena’s holiday event, Lena can’t shake the feeling of disappointment that follows her. She can’t put her finger on what bothers her about the photo Kara prints and gets framed of them, until one night she’s glaring at the picture and a wayward thought darts across her mind.

_I should have kissed her._

The thought stops Lena in her tracks, her brain record-scratching to a halt. But as shocking as it is, her new revelation soon envelops her like a warm blanket. She wants to kiss Kara. She… loves Kara.

Lena’s eyes sting with tears– she’s in love. A state so pedestrian, so normal… it’s something she’d never imagined she’d have again, and yet here it is, proof that despite the parts of her no longer her own, she’s still capable of the one thing it is to be human. To love.

She laughs then, a wet sound that leaves her sniffling as she cranks up the holiday radio. The familiar music fills the room, and Lena lets herself bop around to the beat, unable to sit still.

She’s in love.

She’s alive.

—

She doesn’t tell Kara.

As soon as her initial euphoria dims, doubt surges in to take her place. What if Kara doesn’t feel the same way? What if the reason Kara got the photo of them framed is because it perfectly encapsulates their friendship– their friendship, and nothing more?

If Lena says something, and Kara doesn’t feel the same way, she’ll ruin everything that fills her life with joy: their friendship, working with Supergirl, being roommates, everything. So Lena keeps her discovery to herself, and instead cherishes every moment she has with Kara.

They bake cookies for Kara’s annual holiday party, and Lena takes a mental snapshot of Kara smiling at her over coffee, her cheek smudged with flour. She helps decorate the tree, and feels her hand burn under Kara’s touch when Kara wobbles on the ladder and reaches for her in reflex.

She avoids the mistletoe Kara puts up like the plague, determined not to be caught beneath it with Kara or anyone else.

There’s something special in the way Kara welcomes others into their home. The guests are comfortable enough, but there’s a stiffness in their postures to be in someone else’s home, but Lena isn’t stiff. She’s totally at ease, as much a host as Kara. But her eyes are never far from Kara, who looks festive and cozy in a flattering christmas sweater.

Kara glows in the the twinkle of the christmas tree lights, her smile warm and infectious. Heat pools in Lena’s chest, and this time it has nothing to do with the kryptonite sitting there. Its all Kara, all smiles, and when Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree comes up on the playlist, Lena lets Kara pull her into the dance they never got at the gala.

By the end Lena is laughing and giddy with happiness, her face flushed. They flop onto the couch together, giggling. Kara leans into her, and Lena knows in that moment there is no other place she would rather be than right here, her arm hooked through Kara’s.

She is home.

—

After the new year, Lena finds herself in a state of calm. L-Corp has completed its rebranding and is running smoothly. The media furor around her has largely dissipated with no shocking news to feed them. She and Kara are in a state of perfect harmony.

Even her work with the DEO has been minimal over the holidays, so when Lena is pinged with a set of coordinates, Lena relishes the change of pace.

With a touch of her watch Lena’s armor slides into place around her, and she when arrives at the location she’s surprised to see Supergirl hasn’t beat her there. Cueing her comms, Lena radios back to the DEO.

“Command, this is Luthor. I am on site, please advise.”

“Luthor, this is Command. Supergirl and Director Danvers have just wrapped up at another location and are en route. Secure perimeter.”

“Roger that.”

Lena scopes out the area from a distance first. There doesn’t appear to be any movement external to the building, so when she finally approaches she doesn’t expect any interlopers. Even so, the lack of life from inside the warehouse puts her on edge.

Maybe it’s another warehouse of Coville’s, she reasons, and the DEO is concerned more kryptonite may be present. Even if it were, something feels off. Lena carefully approaches, and upon finding nothing of interest at the perimeter, gets a little closer.

As she steps close enough to peer into one of the windows, several things happen at once. A small grenade clinks to the pavement behind her, issuing a thick plume of smoke that blankets the immediate area in a dense fog, blinding her. Lena immediately switches her optics to thermal, just in time to see a hulking figure loom with a rocket launcher at the ready on his shoulder.

When it fires, it releases not a rocket but a fine metal mesh that wraps tightly around Lena with enough force to knock her from her feet. The figure clicks a button and the net comes to life with electricity, surging through her armor and shorting out every circuit. It blinds and burns her, and suddenly her suit locks into place around her, dead in the water.

With her optics gone, Lena can’t see or hear anything except her own ragged breath, until an unseen hand reaches under her chin and rips her helmet open. The smoke from the grenade fills her nose and lungs, making her choke. Through tearing eyes Lena can just make out the shadow of another figure crouching next to her.

Something sharp pricks against her neck, and in moments Lena’s senses begin to blur. The last thing she hears before losing consciousness is a familiar voice.

“Welcome back, sis.”


	23. Chapter 23

Kara marches into the DEO to track down her sister, and finds Alex in the command center, directing a team through a field exercise. Alex doesn’t give her a second glance until Kara steps between her and the monitors.

“Do you need something, Supergirl?”

“Lena is missing.”

That gives Alex pause. After a moment’s consideration, she passes command of the exercise over to Agent Vasquez, then pulls Kara to an empty conference room. “Evidence?”

“She didn’t come home last night.”

“Okay. You checked her office?”

“Assistant was about to call the police. Supergirl was able to convince them to hold off.”

Alex nods. “Okay, let’s retrace her steps–”

“I already have. Nothing. The only thing I could think of was that Lena might have been called out for a mission. Did the DEO assign her anything?”

Shaking her head, Alex dismisses the idea. “Lena’s callouts go through me. I didn’t authorize anything.”

“And you haven’t heard any chatter about her being targeted?” Kara asks. “This isn’t like her Alex. I’m worried something really awful has happened to her.”

“I’ll put a word out to our analysts to see if anything comes up that could hint at a kidnapping or assassination. We’ll do everything we can, okay?”

Kara nods, but her heart isn’t in it. Alarm clamors in her ears, slowly eclipsing all rational thought. All she can think of is Lena– Lena alone, Lena scared. She’s already survived her mother’s experiments… what else will Lena be forced to endure?

—

Lena comes to strapped to an operating table. The cold visage of her mother completes the nightmare. More chilling however, is the sight of her brother’s grinning features looming over.

“There you are,” Lex greets, tapping the tip of Lena’s nose with one finger. “Geez, getting that sedative just right has been an experience! Too little, you could wake up and bust right through these restraints. Too much, you’re out like a light, which is no fun. But, I think we’ve got it worked out now.”

He gestures to the tubing dangling from the IV bag hanging near her head. With a strap across her forehead, Lena can’t turn her head to trace it to its destination, but through the foggy haze around her, she feels a tug at her neck, and surmises that they’ve got a line straight to her carotid artery.

“Wha’ d'you want?” Lena slurs, fighting the numb feeling in her lips and tongue.

“Why, you, sis! I mean, we already have your research, so you’re the last missing piece.”

Lena blinks at him, struggling to put together what his plan could possibly be. How had he learned about her research? What did he need her for?

Sensing her confusion, Lex’s grin grows. “What, you think there aren’t any anti-alien sympathizers in an organization that hunts aliens?”

The DEO. He has a mole. Concern for Kara flares, but she struggles to hide it. The less Lex thinks she knows, the better. Luckily, her brother doesn’t seem to notice.

“Brava, by the way. Brava. You cracked the kryptonite code! If I’d known all it would have taken was the risk of harming the girl in blue, I would have let you go sooner.”

Lena closes her eyes. Of course Lex is involved with Cadmus as well. She should have known. He is the one who killed her.

“But really, the real find was that mineral you found in that kryptonian stash. What did you call it? Harun'el. That was the real discovery.”

The memory of the white hot pain of touching the statue, the sear of her heat vision, the POWER that had coursed through her veins washes over Lena. The trepidation solidifies into true fear when her mother pulls a rolling tray closer, and Lena sees a chunk of mineral glowing a dark, familiar purple.

She recognizes the black kryptonite, and she recognizes its shape– its shaped precisely like the crystal already embedded in her chest. Ice courses through her veins.

“No,” Lena murmurs. “Please, don’t do this.”

Lillian caresses her forehead, her touch jarringly gentle. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. It’ll be completely painless.”

“As far as we know,” Lex amends, unconcerned. “But imagine it Lena– a mineral that imbues Kryptonian abilities, in a chassis powered by kryptonite. You’ll be the ultimate weapon against them.”

“I won’t hurt Supergirl,” Lena vows.

“Well, we’ll probably have to rebuild the ole gray matter,” Lex informs her, “so you won’t have much of a choice.”

He pulls back, and looks to their mother. “Ready?”

Lillian nods. “Just relax,” she tells Lena.

“Mother, please, you don’t have to do this–”

“Don’t beg, dear. It’s unbecoming.”

With gloved fingers, Lillian grasps a pair of forceps and hooks the tips under the edges of Lena’s kryptonite shard. With a jolt, the crystal comes free. Lena’s breath instantly grows heavy, and her body goes limp, too dense for her to lift. She knows from her own tests that she’ll survive over an hour before her systems begin to crash, but her mother seems to have no interest in testing her limits.

Setting Lena’s stablized, manufactured kryptonite aside, Lillian reaches for the harun'el. In a single, smooth motion, she sets the crystal into the empty setting, and presses into place.

Strength surges through Lena the moment it clicks home, jackknifing her body against the restraints. As Lex scrambles to increase the sedation, Lena screams.

Pain engulfs her, dark and searing. She screams and screams, until she knows nothing more.

—

Kara’s phone rings, and she fumbles to answer it. “Hello?”

“Don’t come back to the DEO.”

“Alex?”

“On a hunch, I checked Lena’s callout logs. She was pinged thirty-four hours ago with a set of coordinates.”

“You said–”

“It didn’t come through me.” Alex’s tone was clear, making sense of her initial warning– she suspects a mole in the DEO. “I’m sending the coordinates to your phone. I’m sending Vasquez with a team of agents. Do NOT approach until they arrive.”

“Alex, she could be–”

“If it was a set up, then the odds of Lena still being there are zero to nil. But if she is still there, then you’re going to need back up.”

As soon as the coordinates come in, Kara flies there immediately. She doesn’t approach– she doesn’t need to. All it takes is one scan with her hearing and x-ray vision to know that if Lena had been there a day ago, she isn’t there now.

She was gone.


	24. Chapter 24

Kara doesn’t know what to do. There’s nothing she can do. Lena’s kryptonite signature is no longer within range of the DEO’s sensors. Whatever happened at the coordinates Lena was sent to, her captors cleaned up after themselves. There’s no trace of her, no clue to follow.

Life goes on.

The apartment is cold without Lena in it, her meals tasteless with no one to share them. She nearly quits CatCo to devote herself to the search full time, but Alex warns her against it.

“Lena sold her privacy to get your job back,” her sister says. “Do you really think she’d want you to throw it away just to spin your wheels at the DEO?”

They’re no closer to pinning down the mole either, forcing Kara to keep her distance from the agency. So Kara throws herself back into CatCo– if she can’t help in the search for Lena, she can at least preserve her legacy.

It’s not long before L-Corp holdings start suffering mysterious arsons. First its a vacant lot, branded with a mysterious sigil. Then its an nth metal refinery, its warehouses demolished. One by one, more companies start suffering damages.

“Danvers!” Snapper barks one evening, just before quitting time.

Kara snaps to in an instant. “Yes, boss!”

“Eyewitness claims to have seen the person responsible for the L-Corp arsons. Get a quote.”

“Shouldn’t he talk to the police…?”

“They don’t consider him a credible witness. Find out why, and get a quote we can use.”

Kara shrugs. “Yes boss.”

It’s not like she has anything better to do.

By the time she gets to the warehouse district, it’s full dark, and her contact was nowhere to be found.

“Hello?” she calls out, scanning the area with her senses. She catches an odd sound, but it’s strange enough that she doesn’t identify where its coming from until a body drops from the sky, crumpling in a heap on the broken pavement.

It’s her contact. The man is beaten half to death, but Kara can hear his heartbeat and feel his breath against her fingers when she puts a hand under his nose. Snapping her gaze to sky, she strains to see the dark silhouette hovering in the night.

Satisfied that the man is alive, Kara jumps into the air to meet the dark figure. “Who are you?” she demands, eyes glowing with heat vision at the ready.

Kara can only just make out a smirk in the darkness before twin beams of purple energy slams into her chest, sending her tumbling through the air. Winded, Kara rights herself and strips out of her civilian attire in a blink.

“There she is: the girl of steel.”

The voice that emanates from the darkness is deep and familiar, but she can’t place it.

“Did you know that under enough force, even steel can shatter?”

The figure flies out of the darkness, catching Kara around the waist, slamming her through the concrete wall of the warehouse behind her. Fists fly at her face, so fast even Kara has difficulty keeping up with her. Desperate to get some distance between them, she releases a burst of freeze breath. The cloud doesn’t even faze her enemy. The punches keep coming, connecting with her face and torso with enough force to knock the breath from her body.

As she struggles to stay one step ahead of the assault, Kara’s mind races. Her opponent is as strong or stronger than any she’s faced so far, and as fast as she is. But its the initial blast of violet energy that leaves her confused. If she didn’t know any better, she’d say it was heat vision.

Kara takes a swing and misses. The dark figure darts away and then zooms right back, as capable of flight as any Kryptonian. They kick Kara square in the ribs, slamming her down into the pavement with enough force to crack the asphalt beneath her.

Squinting against the glare of a security light that comes to life, Kara peers up at her opponent, who steps casually into the patch of light.

Kara’s heart stutters in her chest.

“Lena?”

Lena kneels beside her, her features soft with an empty smile. Taking Kara’s face in her hands, Lena looks deep into Kara’s eyes.

It is Lena, of that Kara has no doubt. But the light that Kara has come to cherish is no longer present in her gaze, leaving her eyes fathomless and without empathy, even as a familiar eyebrow lifts into a perfect, smirking arch.

“Not anymore,” Lena says, before tightening her grip on Kara’s head. She slams Kara’s head into the pavement once, twice, three times, until Kara’s vision fades to black, and the last thing she hears is Lena’s cold voice.

“I am Vengeance.”


	25. Chapter 25

“But why would Lena be attacking her own holdings?”

Alex stands next to Kara’s sunlamp, hands on her hips. Having heard Kara’s account, she has questions. So does Kara.

“Because it’s not Lena anymore. Or at least, I don’t think Lena is at the wheel. She called aherself Vengeance.” Kara runs her hands over her face. “What I want to know is who did this to her?”

“There’s only one person on Earth who could even hope to replicate Lena’s kryptonite research.”

Dread pools in Kara’s stomach. Lex. Of course.

“He escaped shortly before Lena disappeared,” Alex explains.

Kara closes her eyes. “The holdings that have a been attacked have all been acquired since Lena took over at L-Corp. He’s dismantling all the progress she’s made, and he’s using her to do it.”

It’s sick. It turns Kara’s stomach, even as her stomach breaks in two. When Lena comes back to herself, she’s going to be devastated.

Kara looks at her sister. “How are we going to get her back?”

Alex can only shrug.

“I don’t know.”

—

The attacks continue. The media catches on to the fact that it’s a single perpetrator, and starts trying to track down who this new villain is. Lex, in his cruelty, gives Lena a suit, but not a mask.

The slash of purple paint across her eyes does nothing to hide her identity. The whole of National City knows it’s Lena, and to Kara’s horror, not everyone is afraid.

“Finally those aliens can have a taste of how us humans have been feeling, with that girl of steel menace flying around all over the place…”

“I for one feel better knowing there’s someone looking out for us humans who can go toe to toe with Supergirl–”

“It’s about time someone stood up the Kryptonians!”

Never mind that Lena’s powers made her no longer human, never mind that Lena’s mind– her very identity– has been warped beyond recognition. Never mind that after Lena is finished dismantling the new L-Corp, she targets not Supergirl, but soft targets like the Luthor Childrens Hospital, known to accept alien patients, and the alien food bank across town.

Little by little, Vengeance whittles away at the alien resources in National City, until the mayor is forced to call a curfew for all citizens, not just aliens. Only then do the humans of National City begin to fear their champion.

Vengeance descends on the summer festival in Marigold Park, scattering humans and aliens alike as she uses her heat vision to destory tents and food trucks, wreaking mayhem and panic. By the time Supergirl swoops in Vengeance has flown off, as swiftly as she arrived.

The scene repeats itself over and over. Vengeance appears, deals her destruction, and vanishes as soon as Kara arrives. Soon, Kara realizes that Vengeance is playing with her, as cat toys with a mouse.

Truthfully, Kara is relieved. She doesn’t know if she can fight Vengeance, knowing that Lena isn’t to blame, knowing there’s a chance Lena is still in there somewhere. But as the destruction and fear continues to mount, Kara knows she needs to end it.

Supergirl attends the grand re-opening of the first food bank destroyed by Vengeance. It’s a demonstration of hope and peace– there’s no way Lex would allow it to go uninterrupted.

Sure enough, just as the ribbon is about to be cut, a dark figure swoops in. Kara hears her coming– she doesn’t wait for Vengeance to strike first.

Surging into the air, Kara catches Vengeance around the middle before she can get off a single blast of heat vision. She fires them both high into the atmosphere, and doesn’t let her go until they’re higher than any flight path, with no risk of collateral damage.

When they finally part, Kara squares her shoulders, ready to speed after Vengeance if the villain tried to make a beeline for food bank once more. But Vengeance simply hovers, a lazy smirk on her face, and Kara realizes that her opponent is finally ready to face off against her.

The thought chills Kara to the bone.

“I don’t want to hurt you, Lena!” Kara calls.

Vengeance’s smirk deepens into something dark.

“You won’t.”

Kara rockets towards her the moment Vengeance moves. They lock into an exchange of blows that seems endless. Vengeance doesnt tire, never falters. Kara’s world narrows to the sole focus of staying alive. It’s hours before she gets in a lucky shot, aided by feint to Lena’s solarplexus before slamming her fist into the side of Lena’s neck.

The blow connects hard, sending Lena tumbling through the air. Before she can right herself, Kara wraps her in a bear hug, locking her arms tight around her.

“LENA!”

To her shock, Vengeance doesn’t struggle against the prison of Kara’s arms. Instead, she blinks sluggishly, her eyes dazed. Slowly, her gaze comes into focus.

“Kara?”

“Lena? Oh, thank Rao– Lena, is that you?”

“I… think so?” Lena’s fingers dig deep into Kara’s sides, making her grimace. Lena groans. “Not– not for long.”

Whatever has shaken Lena free, she can feel the dark pull of the black kryptonite, urging her towards violence, towards destruction. Towards hate. Tears fill her eyes.

“Kara, please, I don’t have long–”

“No, Lena we can help–!”

Lena leans in, sealing their lips together in a desperate kiss. It lingers for long moments, until Lena finally pulls back with tears in her eyes.

“I love you, Kara,” she says. “And I think you love me too, so….”

Kara nods. “I do,” she murmurs softly. “I always have.”

Lena rests their foreheads together in relief, accepting Kara’s words without protest. She doesn’t have time for disbelief, no time for doubt.

“I know we pinky promised, but–”

Kara’s eyes widen. “Lena, no…”

“I need you to kill me, Kara.” Lifting her head, she meets Kara’s gaze. “Please.”

“I– I can’t…”

“I don’t–augh!” Lena cries out in pain as the kryptonite sends a surge of energy through her veins. She can feel the monster in her trying to get out, but she clings to Kara, willing herself to fight it as long as she can. “I don’t want to hurt anyone else! Please, Kara!”

Kara shakes her head. “No, just hang on, we’ll get you to the DEO, and then–”

Her voice breaks off as Lena’s fear disappears. Like a switch has been flipped, her gaze darkens, and meets Kara’s with predatory intent.

“…Lena?”

“You should have killed me when you had the chance.”

Vengeance snaps her head forward, smashing the bony part of her forehead into Kara’s nose. Pain explodes behind Kara’s eyes, and her grip loosens. Vengeance spins away from Kara’s grasping fingers– Kara gets nothing but the fabric of her suit, which tears away under her fingertips.

“You are weak,” Vengeance crows, facing Kara. “You deserve to die like the vermin you are.”

Kara stares at her– more specifically, at the dark purple stone seated in Lena’s chest, exposed by the rip in her suit. Never would Kara have expected to miss the glare of green kryptonite, but the sight of the dark crystal in its place turns her stomach. This is what changed Lena so completely– this is how Lex changed her.

But even as Kara begins to lose hope, and idea occurs to her. Lex may have replicated Lena’s kryptonite research, but he hasn’t replicated her armor.

“Time for a reboot,” she mutters to herself.

With a yell, Kara launches towards Lena, releasing a stream of heat vision as she goes. She funnels every ounce of energy into the blast, directing all of it towards the exposed crystal in Lena’s chest.

The shock of the blast locks Lena in place, leaving her unable to lift her hands in defense as Kara cocks back her fist and punches her square in the chest, her knuckles directly impacting the black kryptonite.

The force of the blow shoots Lena backwards in the air like a ragdoll. The kryptonite cracks, then shatters. Kara sees the moment Lena loses consciousness, limbs lifting in a macabre moment of weightlessness before she plummets.

Kara descends after her, scooping Lena into her arms just before they hit the ground. She stumbles to a landing, her exhaustion making itself known. But all she can see is Lena’s lifeless body, her chest still of breath.

Mustering the last of her energy, Kara flies them to the DEO, cushioning their rough landing with her own body, cradling Lena against her front.

“Alex!” Kara screams for her sister, desperate for help.

“ALEX!!”


	26. Chapter 26

“You can’t stay with her, Kara,” Alex sighs, hours later. “Not this time.”

“Why not?”

It’s been her role, ever since Lena was first rescued. Lena healed, and Kara waited, and eventually, Lena always woke up. What will happen, then, if this one time Kara can’t sit with her?

“Her system didn’t respond to her usual green kryptonite,” Alex explains, patient despite her exhaustion. “The only way we could keep her going was to hook her up to the supercharged cystals she developed while testing her suit.”

“But the lead shielding–”

“Isn’t sufficient. Not for this.”

“Then I’ll sit with her as long as I can…”

Alex gives her a hard stare. “Is that really what Lena would want?” Kara doesn’t have an answer. “We’ve got her in her lab, which is the only reason you’re even able to remain in the building right now.”

Lena would have shielded her lab from top to bottom before experimenting with her kryptonite. She had been so meticulous about protecting Kara, it would be an insult to her memory to expose herself now.

No, not her memory– Lena isn’t dead yet.

Kara still has hope.

“So what do we do now?”

Alex shrugs. “You keep being Supergirl, and I start reading up on Lena’s research. If there’s anyway to wean her back down to the usual kryptonite, it’ll be there.”

Kara nods. She doesn’t like the idea of leaving Lena alone, but she’s needed more as Supergirl. There’s a lot of scared people in National City following Vengeance’s appearance at the food bank re-opening. Part of her is grateful for the distraction: unable to wait with Lena, Kara would go out of her mind just sitting on her hands doing nothing.

“What about the mole?” she asks, quietly.

Alex’s gaze hardens. “We’re still working on it.”

“Alex–”

“I’ll keep her safe,” her sister vows. “I promise.”

There’s nothing Kara can do. Just nearing the corridor to Lena’s lab makes her nauseous, and makes her skin heat. But she can’t settle, not until Alex sets her up in a spare office with a video feed of Lena’s lab.

Looking at her, Kara almost feels like she’s been transported back in time. It’s like she’s looking at Lena just after her first rescue, her body slack under the thin hospital sheets. But it isn’t the same: Kara forces herself to take note of the muscles on Lena’s frame, the fullness of her pale cheeks.

Lena’s no longer the skeletal figure she used to be. She’s not weak, or frail. She’s strong. Lex may have stolen Lena, but he hasn’t killed her. She can still fight.

And she will.

—

Days crawl by, and Kara exists in a lasting purgatory, drifting between Catco, her Supergirl duties and her surveillance of Lena. Through the lens of the video camera, she can see for herself how Lena’s lifesigns grow stronger and more stable. But Lena doesn’t wake up.

After a week, Alex warns her they’ll be trying to wean Lena to a weaker kryptonite.

“Are you sure it’s safe?” Kara asks.

Alex’s expression doesn’t impart any kind of certainty. “Honestly, I’d prefer to do it with her conscious. But if we wait too long her body may grow accustomed to the increased output, and make it more difficult to downgrade later.”

If not outright impossible.

Kara knows what Lena’s decision would be, were she awake. The one constant since Lena’s rescue has been Lena’s refusal to harm anyone, especially Kara. If Lena could choose, she’d make the same decision Alex has.

“Okay,” Kara says. “Let’s do it.”

—

The transition proceeds smoothly, each stage of the stepdown process punctuated by long periods of observation to confirm that Lena’s condition doesn’t worsen.

With each reduction of the kryotonite’s output, Kara creeps ever closer to Lena’s lab. By the time Alex completes the downgrade with the insertion of Lena’s standard manufactured kryptonite, Kara is waiting anxiously in the lab across the hall.

As soon as the old kryptonite is shut away in it’s lead lined box, Kara is so nervous she could speed to the moon and back, but she steps into Lena’s lab and makeshift medbay with deliberate care.

Alex notices her hesitation, and offers a smile of encouragement. “It’s okay,” she says, beckoning for Kara to come closer. “She’s okay.”

“But…”

“Her vitals are strong,” Alex informs her. “She’s handled the stepdown like a champ. She’s o-kay.”

Kara nods. Alex motions to an agent, who delivers a chair without a word. “One chair, as promised.” Alex gives Kara a hug. “I’ll bring you dinner in a bit.”

When she leaves, Kara finds herself alone at Lena’s bedside. Ignoring the chair for now, Kara steps towards the bed. With trembling fingers she reaches out and slips her hand into Lena’s. Her breath catches when their fingers touch, even though Lena’s remain limp against hers. It feels as though something inside Kara slots back into place to have Lena solid and tangible in her hands.

Kara takes a deep breath. With tears burning behind her eyes, she leans down and presses a kiss to Lena’s brow, before touching their foreheads together.

“I love you too, Lena,” she whispers, voice hoarse. “Please, come back to me.”


	27. Chapter 27

_“Drop the syringe, Michaels!”_

Kara hears the bark of Alex’s order in the middle of a pitch meeting at CatCo. In the time it takes her to fumble out of the room and speed to the DEO, she subsequently hears the hiss of Alex’s holster and the retort of a gunshot. She arrives in Lena’s lab in time to catch the syringe before it hits the floor. Michaels’ body receive no such consideration: it drops to the tile in a heap, lifeless.

Kara stares at Alex, eyes wide and heart pounding. Lena sleeps on, undisturbed by the gunshot. When Kara turns her gaze to the syringe in her hand, she’s shocked to see that while the plunger is pulled back, there’s nothing in it.

“It’s empty,” she tells Alex, horror creeping into her voice. Has Alex killed a man for some sort of bluff?

“If he’d pushed that air into Lena’s IV, she’d be dead in a matter of minutes,” Alex tells her, drawing back to her full height. “Would have looked like a heart attack.”

Kara blinks. It would take someone sinister to kill an unconscious woman, and more so to not leave a trace.

“I guess we found our mole,” Alex continues. She glares down at Michaels. “I don’t think he had time to do anything, but I want to check her just in case…”

Alex moves towards Lena, only to stop as she passes Kara, arrested by a loose, but iron grip on her arm.

“Where were the guards?” Kara asks softly. Since the moment Lena has been stabilized, Alex had two guards posted at the door to Lena’s lab to ensure no one without authorization could enter.

Michaels is– was– an analyst. He had no business gaining access to Lena. He shouldn’t have made it this far.

A telling silence answers her.

“You used her as bait.”

Kara’s hand slips away.

“I need to check on Lena.”

Alex widens the distance between them, and neither of them share another word.

—

Lena dreams of Kara.

At least, she thinks she’s dreaming. She claws her way to the surface of a black, fathomless lake, and for a few moments she sees a glimpse of Kara’s face. An apparition perhaps, a manifestation of her one wish to see her friend again. But in the off chance it isnt a dream, she issues a final plea.

“Please, kill me.”

She knows what Lex wanted to turn her into: he wanted to warp her body into a weapon for him to wield. The sight of Kara’s desperate features only confirms that he must have succeeded. So she issues her plea just as an unseen hand reaches from the depths and tugs her back underwater.

Darkness presses in around her, filling her lungs and her senses with chaos and rage not her own. But just before it can fill her completely, a force impacts her chest hard enough to drive the breath from her body. Her world blinks out of existence, and in the void Lena floats.

How long she hangs there, suspended in nothingness, Lena doesnt know. When next she has eyes to open, she does so to find herself staring up at the ceiling of the Cadmus warehouse. She’ll know that ceiling until the day she dies: with its spots of damp and mold, plaster sealing the long crack spanning nearly half its width. She’d stared at that sealed crack for days, hunting for any hint the crack would grow to one day collapse and kill her for good.

Only this time, when Lena takes her gaze from the ceiling, she sees she is not bound to the operating table like she was for all those months. Her limbs are free, but she cannot move them. To her horror, her chest is cut open as if for an autopsy: her mother gazes down at her, with something like pity in her eyes.

“You could have been the Luthor who changed the world,” Lillian says.

Then her attention turns to the Y-incision flaps. With a long handled bolt cutter, she begins to snap Lena’s ribs one by one, until she is able to pry her fingers between Lena’s ribcage and sternum and forcing it open with a sickening crunch.

Lena can’t move as her mother starts rooting around her chest cavity. She can’t breathe. She can’t scream. All she can do is lie there, mired in horror, as tears stream down her cheeks.

I am dead, she realizes. There’s no room in her for relief, not when this is to be her eternity. Just when she thinks she cant take any more, Lena disconnects from her body. She floats, looking down on herself from above, watching the horror unfold.

I never escaped, did I, she thinks to herself. I was always here.

“I’m so sorry, Lena.”

A voice cuts through the scene, startling Lena as though from a dream.

“I’m sorry, I wasn’t able to sit with you sooner, but Alex was… well, she was trying to protect me. But she’s you’re doing fine now.”

Kara.

Relief floods through Lena, filling her lungs with air.

“We’ve done what we can, Lena,” Kara’s voice continues. “The rest is up to you.”

If Lena didn’t imagine her time away from Cadmus, if she hadn’t imagined Kara, then… perhaps she wasn’t dead after all. And if she isn’t dead…. then she can still fight.

Below on the operating table, her fingers twitch.

—

In the days that follow, Alex doesn’t try to explain herself. She doesn’t need to: Kara understands the reasons behind her actions, but she doesn’t agree with them. Not when it’s Lena’s safety in the balance. And so they enter into an uneasy truce: Kara allows Alex to care for Lena, but doesn’t let Lena out of her sight.

Not until an alien attack calls her out on Supergirl business. It takes hours, and by the finish of it, she’s exhausted, and all she wants to do now is go home, take a shower, and curl up with her favorite television show.

Except home isn’t home anymore. Devoid of Lena, it’s just an empty apartment, hollow and lifeless.

Hovering above the cityscape, Kara allows herself a moment to wallow, closing her eyes against the burn of tears.

“Supergirl, you’re needed at the DEO,” Alex says over comms, bringing Kara back to reality.

“On my way,” she clips back, just shy of a growl.

She lands on her platform at the DEO moments later, intent on a a quick rinse in the locker room before making her way to Lena’s lab. But there’s an unusual whisper in the building that Kara picks up on immediately, and eyes flicker towards her in concern before skittering away. 

Alarm floods Kara immediately, and she speeds to the lab– only to find the scene has changed.

Finding Alex there is common enough, though less so in the days since the start of their enduring silence. But this time, Lena isn’t lying prone on the hospital bed. She’s upright, sitting with her legs over one side of the bed, speaking with Alex in low tones.

The door hisses open to admit Kara, prompting them both to turn and look at her. Alex melts away, but Kara doesn’t notice. All she can see is the acuity of Lena’s gaze, the familiar spark that soon gives way to a smile.

“Hey,” Lena greets.

Kara blurs into a hug, wrapping her arms around Lena and hugging her fiercely. Lena softens into her, folding herself into the nooks and crannies of Kara’s embrace as she tucks her face against Kara’s neck.

They stay like that, for what seems like hours.

“Thank you,” Lena whispers, so softly only Kara could hear. “Thank you for breaking your promise.”

Kara only smiles. “Thanks to you, I didn’t have to. We only had to run interference long enough for you to fight back on your own.”

Lena presses her face deeper into the crook of Kara’s neck, her breath warm and fluttering against Kara’s skin. It was a small comfort, but Kara as much as she received: something inside her chest eases, a missing piece locking back into place.

Their fight isn’t over yet: Lex and Lillian are still out there, Lena’s reputation lies in ruins. But right here, right now, they have each other, and that’s enough.


End file.
